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Why Are So Many Nerds Libertarians?
BrendanMcGrail writes "Why do so many nerds seem to lean toward the Libertarian end of the spectrum? As a leftist, I know there are many people who share my ideological views, but have very little in common with me in terms of profession and non-work interests. Is the community's political bent directly tied to our higher than average economic success?"
that creativity is not a group project. It is about the individual.
Why do so many nerds seem to lean toward the Libertarian end of the spectrum?
Can you cite your source for this data? Or are you just assuming this because some of your friends are libertarians?
Because they're smarter. (n/t)
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." - Bob Dylan
Because nerds just have to be right.
.. because we spend so much time reading tech manuals that instead of really getting to know the candidates we form our political leanings by the ratings of the party's ads on youtube.
Nerds are unrealistic when it comes to how human beings actually work. They seem to have some vision of people that is way closer to ideal than actually exists. What's more, most nerds I talk to recognize this even in themselves, yet persist in the delusion.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
I think it's just a case of us geeks being keenly aware of privacy issues surrounding the use and abuse of technology to invade other peoples' rights. I'm a libertarian, too.
Because they see the average level of intelligence shown by those around them and don't want any of that lot deciding things for them?
Here in Europe they would be considered right wing nut jobs, certainly not left wing.
As to why they are so popular among geeks? Are they? Or are they simply a very vocal minority, owing to the fact that they have prescribed to a simple ideology that gives them the illusion to have easy answers even to complex problems?
As a leftist, I know there are many people who share my ideological views ... Is the community's political bent directly tied to our higher than average economic success?
First off, I don't agree that Libertarianism is "leftist" per-se. Secondly, I don't think income has anything to do with it. Constitutionalism/Libertarianism is simply a very logical conclusion, if one is of the opinion that the United States constitution is a very good document for the foundation of government. Given that "nerds" (as you call them) have an affinity for logic, I don't see why the two are such an unusual fit.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
But, are they really libertarian or do they just use the word?
New! Device Legs: These legs will help your poor OEM installed product escape any hamfistedness it may encounter. Ava
Note this is purely an American problem. Geeks and nerds from other countries turn into lefties, not Thatcher's little free-marketeerians. People outside of America have no idea who Ayn Rand is, and tend to think that 99% of America (excepting San Francisco and Boston) are rabid right-wing capitalists.
Nerds are often psychologically isolated and have grown up without any sense of community or personal involvement. They already reject other people, rejecting any cohesive form of government is just the next step. They felt they were better than anyone else when they were young and (rightly) detested the very broken American public school system. However, because they are actually idiots, and incapable of seeing further than their own nose, they think smashing it all up is the key.
How anyone can think the private sector is a panacea is beyond me. Look at the fucked-up American medical system for a simple example. Look at how Canada and Sweden regularly top the standard-of-living charts despite having much smaller GDPs than America.
Because we nerds are the more knowledgeable bunch and don't like to be told what to do. We want to do things our way, and hence we tend to lean toward the libetarian view.
His exploit "just works". Apple fanbois everywhere implode in a self-collapsing vortex of cognitive dissonance. by jjack
Heck .. both the dems and the gop are screwing us .. less laws , more freedom and .. not more
big time.anyways
a better attitude is what we all need
government intervention in what i want to do with
my life.
Well, there seems to be a very high correlation between "geeks" and the developers of F/OSS. Considering the fact that FOSS is a libertarian form of software development I think it's a natural progression from hobby/career interests and politics.
How many people in care giving professions (nurse, teacher) are democratic
How many people in top tier of corporations are republican
I see nothing that ties this to economic status. In fact I see a lot of Libertarian & developers who have very low incomes.
I'm curious if the Democratic or Republican party comes in second in the F/OSS community. I'll guess it's Republican because we probably don't care much for the welfare philosophy more than anything else. If we did, we would all use Windows and never ask questions about it because we would be so grateful that Bill Gates is keeping us from thinking too hard (or much). But if computers aren't your interest, then you probably don't what to think too much about it.
Why do so many nerds seem to lean toward the Libertarian end of the spectrum? As a leftist, I know [blah]
If you're a "leftist", you're not a libertarian. Left-leaning people generally believe the state should force people to help one another despite mankind's natural egotistic tendencies, through taxes. Libertarians believe they should be free to do whatever they want provided everybody else is free as well. Not exactly the same thing eh?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I think at it's basic route the average citizen lets their emotion appeal to their decision making process. This in turn lets governments and the media easily control them.. through fear and propoganda. I think the reason why nerds are libertarians is because they are less susceptible to such hogwash like sacrificing your security for liberty because they are more logical?
They transfer their need to tinker with electronics and technology to political institutions and society. Instead of becoming a criminal, they yearn for a legal and socially acceptable method to tinker as much as possible with reality without also being hacked by other people, that being libertarianism.
It's because they haven't read A People's History of the United States. All the same kind of posturing, politicking, coordinated oppression, all that has been going on forever and ever. The Constitution, while clearly laid out and functional, was into that shit up to its neck. At least read the story of the Whiskey rebellion.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
If you see political ideologies as a one-dimensional spectrum, you aren't paying enough attention. Educate yourself.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
The original post starts: As a leftist..., I think of a leftist as someone who believes in a benevolent government that taxes the wealthy to provide benefits to the have-nots. This equates to Big Government.
/.'ers?
To me, a libertarian is someone who wants as little government involvement in their life as possible. This equates to Small Government.
So is the original poster, as a leftist, is disagreement with the majority of
Not to generalize (but to generalize...), nerds tend to be from middle and upper middle class backgrounds. They're usually intellectual workers, been to college and university, and so... how much experience do they actually have with the brutality of the world as it is for most people?
For me, (economic) libertarians seem out of touch with the way the world really is. Nerds tend to have brains and tend to be well-educated and as such, tend to do well, economically. It's very easy to forget not everyone has that natural advantage (as least with intellect) and that not everyone might react the same way as you.
Libertarianism sounds great until you actually realize a few things: property isn't the centre of human life, human nature isn't built around the adorational worship of negative rights and that a lot of people are just plain exploitative of people less well off than them and less intelligent; and to say, "oh, too bad, it's your fault, we're realizing our potential and you have right to hold us down!" isn't just wrong, but cold-hearted ... and is that the libertarian paradise you want to live in, really?
There seems to be a tendency to confuse luck with economic determinism. Plus being introverted correlates to being less community oriented.
Because they care about being in control of their own lives...
Nerds are particularly sensitive to individual liberty, because they tend to want to think and act in ways that deviate from the norm -- that is, break new ground and innovate, whether scientifically, technologically, or philosophically. So they are very aware that if society is to dictate some small number of acceptable ways of thinking or acting, then their ways, being unique, will not be among the acceptable ones. Therefore a libertarian society is the only type in which they are free to innovate.
Your glasses please, I won't be here all night.
A computer programmer is used to simulating a computer executing his code in his head. He thinks, if I change this then its going to do this. So when it comes to government policy, he does the same thing. He can't help but see the impact of price controls, wage controls, not letting companies fire employees, etc. If you can really think through to the results of many government policy ideas, you realize that Libertarianism makes the most sense. Also, I converted to Objectivism when I was 12 years old, before I had money.
I already don't like having assumptions made about my beliefs just because I hold one or two in common with one side of the political spectrum. Maybe it is inevitable, but I don't have to like it. While I can agree, in concept, with the right to have personal freedoms that certainly doesn't mean that I am a libertarian, nor that I hold many beliefs in common with the ideology. ...and yet I have been told (not asked, not assumed, but TOLD) that I must therefore be a libertarian. No sir, I didn't like it.
Is the community's political bent directly tied to our higher than average economic success?
I don't really think so...this is just my impression. I'd agree the majority of the /. crowd is in the upper range of middle class, with maybe a few in the fabulously wealthy .com entrepreneur class and a few at the other end of the scale living in their mom's basement.
I'd be willing to wager a guess that this group is more comfortable with a libertarian philosophy because, in general, they're more comfortable in a chaotic environment like the internet than an economic explanation. Most of you seem pretty capable of taking care of yourself and solving problems without government intervention. That is somewhat at odds with the wider population, depending where you live.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
If it is true that nerds tend to be libertarians or that libertarians tend to be nerds (which seems more likely) then I would guess the reason is that both groups just want to be free to pursue their interests without government interference. For most libertarians I know that's the point of departure. For nerds... well, they just don't suffer fools very well. Government is just people, and seldom of the nerd kind, it seems.
I would humbly submit that (1) people who read Slashdot probably have varied interests, and economics and politics are probably two of those. Since (2) economists tend to be libertarian in their views, and since (3) much of the carefully-argued political theory comes to us by way of Rawls and Nozick and the like, treating these fields as essentially technical fields may encourage a libertarian view.
Of course you must bear in mind that this is Slashdot, the nerd / libertarian Nexus of the Universe. On other sites YMMV.
"No sane man will dance." -- Marcus Tullius Cicero
Believe me or not. Whatever your way of thinking is, you'll always find someone who thinks the same way. And you always try to match your behavior with the other person to the maximum and see how similar they are. So, if you see many nerd-leftist around you because you yourself are. Try to find some nerd who is a not a good person and ask him how does he feel about the nerds.
Spam: Any activity on internet to gain popularity without paying to advertising companies like Google.
It's not that being a nerd makes one a libertarian, or that being a libertarian magically transforms one into a nerd (though I hear it can do wonders to your, err, self-confidence).
There is a common cause to this politicial leaning and that way of life called "the nerd way". One hint is that the overwhelming majority (75% approximately) of all the libertarians I know are categorised in the "*NT*" part of the MBTI, meaning they are all Thinking rather than Feeling, and iNtuitive rather than Sensing. For example INTJ is the archetype of nerd.
That makes them more inclined to think about theory and complex problems, than what their colleague thinks of their look or how a given principle will make them feel about themselves. When you apply this to politics, that means they'll be looking at society, economics, justice, right and law with a mind that is non-pragmatic but dedicated to finding the actual truth. They will often develop complete theoretical structures for explaining their choices, because they are easily swayed by a convincing, rational argument, however obscure ; and not by a popular soundbite or appeals to emotion.
Libertarianism is one such political interpretation: it leaves little to no place to emotional reaction, does not call upon popularity, and instead builds on the strictest rational analysis (it's not a secret that Ayn Rand was obsessed with acting as rationnally as possible, to the point of obsession) and "heavy" theoretical considerations about "what actually is justice", "how economy actually works", etc.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Recent slashdot poll, if you can believe that.
Amongst our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as libertarianism, nice red uniforms, and almost fanatical devotion to missing the point through intentionally poor reading comprehension.
2. Even if there is a correlation, it does not prove causation. Nerdiness, wealth and libertarian beliefs... which is the cause and which is the effect?
3. You use the terminology left (and right by default). These labels are inadequate to describe the political beliefs of a person. Traditionally Left stands for lots of liberties in the social arena and mostly restrictions on economic activities. Not necessarily unreasonable restrictions, but restrictions nonetheless. And Right stands for lots of liberties for corporate and economic activities, but severe restrictions on social liberties, again not necessarily all unreasonable. A true libertarian will stand for freedoms and liberties in both the corporate/fiscal arena as well as social arena. And a true libertarian will also stand for rights as well as responsibilities on the exercise of the liberties. There are very few true libertarians. Sometimes libertarianism appears to be an ideal that will never be practical. Please don't say, if everyone becomes a true lib, because a practical working system should work even if all parts of the society does not believe or agree with the principle. A libertarian can not impose even libertarianism on an unwilling population. S it is tougher than you probably imagine.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I know geeks with many different politics. The one thing we have in common is that we all approach the political question from a logical, systems-analysis angle. That's why so many geeks want radical changes in society - we're interested in root causes and want our beliefs to be founded on a set of basic principles, because if those principles are logical then everything we derive from them will be logical too. A mock-scientific approach.
A large section of American geekdom is right-libertarian. This is because (a) certain things about US culture and the US economic setup mean that right-libertarianism looks the most viable option to many people and (b) a strong sense of and desire for liberty and a knowledge of historical tyrannies encourage them to look for a libertarian option - and they come upon the axiom of free individuals forming contracts with each other freely - essentially classical liberalism.
So, why are so many geeks right-libertarian?
Of course, there are plenty of geeks who are Republicans or Democrats or Greens or Communists or Anarchists in the US too. In Europe we have many social democrats ("liberals"), greens and far-left types.
I'm a geek and a libertarian myself, but I'm a left-libertarian. An "Anarchist Socialist". I think the flaw in right-libertarianism is that contracts are rarely freely entered into. If I have $1m and you have $100, I can easily get you to enter into a $200/week contract - I can bully you in the market through greater control of resources. I think its important to differentiate between personal property and productive capital. My computer should be mine; only I use it. My workplace should be equally mine with my co-workers; we all use that productive capital. My community should be held in common with my neighbours. I see landlords and the bourgeoisie* as parasites, living off our labour.
Of course I'm the same as the rest of the geeks, looking for a consistent system and solid axioms before deciding my political beliefs. In my case, it's a fanatical belief in democracy that has led me to my position - if we wouldn't tolerate a dictatorship, why do we tolerate not being able to elect our bosses? If electing politicians isn't democratic (and it's not), couldn't we place the base of power in mass meetings in workplaces and communities, and federate them?
* As in Marx's class system, which is class division based on power, not wealth (except in that wealth is power)
Proletariat: the class that has to sell its labour to survive
Bourgeoisie: the class that purchases the labour of the proletariat, and does not have to work
Indeed, nothing says "oppression" like low taxation and minimal government power.
Well, I doubt that the correlation is due to "higher-than-average economic success." With the exception of entertainers, the wealthy generally like to protect their profitability, and that means voting the business-friendly Republican line. If I had my own business and stockpiles of cash, I would probably switch to the right myself.
Always someone has power over you. The thing to consider is this: Is the power good, or bad?
nerds are libertarians because government is just a bully delivery vector.
With a poor grasp of human nature. 'Nuff said.
a) introduce doubt to the reasoning behind your statement
b) give counter examples, prefferably non-personal
c) allude to the "bigger" dilemma
d) introduce certainty that whatever the bigger dilemma is, your statement is quite irrelevant.
e) solve the big dilemma in one line.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
I think it goes beyond just being smarter. All of my nerd friends and me, besides being smart, are very analytical. We really analyze situations and are usually not swayed by cheap simple tactics the mainstream politicians use. Phrases like "We're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here" just make us think "Well fuck, I'm pretty sure it's more complicated than that." We understand political issues beyond just the talking point sound bytes, which is why we see it's complete BS from both sides of the aisle right now. Libertarian is the only choice in my mind.
Name...That...Autocomplete!
I don't think it's germane to talk about either the RNC or DNC has having anything whatsoever to do with ideology. Both groups are about power, and ideology is just one of the tools that they use to extort votes from their adherents.
In my not-so-humble opinion, both groups are fully corrept and the United States could benefit greatly if we gave them swords (or suicide vests) and let them kill each other off. They are the modern-day national equivalent of the Bloods and Crips, and have nothing whatever to offer actual Americans.
In part, I tend towards Libertarianism, just because I've become so disillusioned with the corporate political process. For the past sixty years, our American system of government has become polluted by merchantilism and the oligarchy of megacorporations. Because of the way that our statutory systems permits literal interpretation of the rule sets (laws), the groups with the most lawyers have become adept at avoiding the intent of laws, and using the literal verbage of the law to commit immoral acts -- read Marx, of the few things he was right about, this corporate corruption leads the list.
Don't misunderstand my comments - corporations are not evil, per se, but because of the management structure and the lack of moral accountability brought on by a statutory legal system, boards of directors of otherwise perfectly reasonable people can corporately make decisions that lead to companies like Altria (Phillip-Morris) and Exxon (as in Valdez). Capitalism only works for the group when it is heavily encumbered against social crimes.
Don't take life too seriously; it isn't permanent.
I came to my political position by combining what I like best about both major parties. I agree with the Left's ideas of social responsibility and with the Right's ideas of a smaller government and a balanced budget. I consider myself a Libertarian b/c that title seems to be broad enough to accept my views.
These days, I generally vote Democrat. Neither party is trustworthy, but the Republicans have apparently abandoned the the ideas which attracted me in the first place.
Or are told what to do by someone else.
You know your own agenda and motives. You only have someone else's word about theirs.
Deleted
...we RTFM?
It's a mistake to think of libertarianism as a right wing concept. It *can* be right wing (and that is who the name is currently associated with) but there are also left wing libertarians.
How much of an ass do you have to be to argue against individual freedom, at least as an ideal?
Most of the people here are smart enough to realise that ideals are something you work towards, not a binary condition. So, in a word where established authority seems to be committed to totalitarianism (not a huge surprise) why wouldn't even fairly moderate people want a shift towards individual freedom as a priority?
So, if you look at the political compass putting a large number of geeks in the bottom half is as expected.
More interesting is the *other* spectrum - left (social welfare) vs right (opportunity to win or lose).Note that this is *not* communism vs capitalism - it is communism or capitalism to the extent that is compatible with personal freedom - neither mega state nor mega corp should be allowed to run your life or know everything about you. There seems to be a much bigger range of opinion here.
Personally I fall somewhere in the middle. People should be free, and the role of the government is to regulate effectively to maintain that freedom without forcing anyone below a certain (low) standard of living. However I would gladly vote for *anyone* on the libertarian side of the line, despite left or right ideology, because pretty much every candidate in recent history has been in favour of totalitarianism - at least once they get into power.
Beep beep.
I know more stalinist nerds than libertarians. And that's not to say that there are many stalinist nerds - maybe the question should be rephrased as "why does such a small group make so much noise on the Internet?"
...try the political compass to find out your left/ right and authoritarian/ libertarian tendencies.
FWIW, I'd disagree that most nerds here in the UK are libertarians. I think that many have a feeling of intellectual superiority over the rest of society, leading to an authoritarian sense that they know what's best for other people.
What about us libertines? Don't we have a place in this scheme too?
Because that's the only kind of posts you'll find in this story.
Besides, most geeks are only interested in the label libertarian. Just look at the posts on slashdot : they are not at all liberal when it comes to letting other people do something they don't like.
Not at all.
And just as often, the special chemistry between the people in a band is lost when they break up, and neither individual ever reaches the same heights again. Look at McCartney.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
The OP is not saying that libertarianism and leftism are the same thing. The OP is asking how come all the other leftists he meets are generally *not* geeks, and all the other geeks (otherwise similar to him) tend to be libertarians rather than leftists.
It's probably path-dependent: a combination of what science fiction people read as teens, and what part of the country you live in. Pretty much any ideology can work for geeks, anyway:
Libertarianism: this system sucks. I'm going to go write my own, and if you want to get a copy from me, that's cool. If not, write your own. If you can't, you're a moron, but as long as you stay out of my way, that's cool, too.
Conservativism: this system works fine. If you can prove to me that there's really a bug (I doubt it), and it's really important (unlikely), I'll fix it. Meanwhile, don't touch anything - I can tell you're going to break it.
Leftism: this system sucks. We're deleting it tonight. Tomorrow we will begin designing and coding an ideal replacement, which everybody will use instead. Meanwhile, we're forming a committee to figure out how to help you through the transition process.
I find it instructive that this story is tagged flamebait. It demonstrates very nicely that the Slashdot population is not willing to brook even the slightest challenge to accepted thinking.
You really couldn't ask for a more straightforward and well constructed question - assumptions are fairly clearly assumptions, nothing is stated as an incontrovertible fact, and opinions are solicited without anyone made to feel stupid for holding them. Yet still, tagged flamebait.
Yes, very instructive indeed.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
I'm Republican. I have read slashdot since its inception. I'm in my late 40's, I'm a CIO, highly paid, highly educated (J.D; degree), and I almost never post on Slashdot. I think this is my third time. I find most of the commentary in the posts to be of "talk radio" quality, and both the selection of articles and their summaries tend to have a left slant. Therefore, I don't feel a part of the community. But I read it because it's an easy way of keeping track of technical news. My guess is there are a lot of others like me.
Most people with right wing views ARE of significantly lower than average intelligence. Plenty of independent research has generated data that can easily be used to prove this. When you look at people with a technological background, they are generally more rational and intelligent, and consequently less likely to be religious/superstitious, and less inclined to have fanatical right wing views (like Republicans or 'Democrats' in america, or the Conservative Party in the UK).
The whole right wing ideology that is prevalent in the United States and its client regimes is an ideology of sheer greed, and total disrespect for humanity. I would like to think that on average, intelligent people have better ethics than to apply their superior intelligence to greedy underhand schemes for money making. Sadly, I also fear this is why technology workers as a profession are exploited and undervalued compared to their true economic worth, and certainly compared to management grades in their own organisations.
I know it's hard to understand, but there are many people who don't want to make decisions for their own life. They prefer them to be made. They also don't want their own opinion, it's more comfortable to take one that's already there and accept it.
I don't get it, to be blunt, but I've met a lot of people who are just that way: Someone said something, and he's kinda smart or at least looks like he is, so what he says is right. That's enough for them and they will accept that and go on with their life.
Generally, I noticed that nerds and geeks want to hear both sides, ponder them and then make a decision themselves. This ultimately leads to the urge to have this liberty also in the political sense. It's not so much that we're able to work on our own (hey, be honest out there, how many here are still living with their parents and don't know how much detergent is needed for their jeans?).
For me it's fairly simple: I don't like to follow, neither do I like to rule. I think cooperation comes from the will of everyone involed to work together, not out of need or force. Forcing some rules upon someone will at best get you lip service, but no support. I believe in the will of the individual, in the common sense and the right to decide for yourself, limited only by interference with someone elses liberty. Why should I force my point of view on someone else? What's my business in someone elses pockets or even bedroom?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Many nerds are unable to empathize with others: they just can't put themselves in someone else's shoes. They think that they are alone in the universe, different from everyone else. They were picked on through school so they're still slightly paranoid.
Under these conditions Libertarianism makes a lot of sense.
Because nerds love to oversimplify and overreach, thinking that the simpler and more elegant a theory or approach is, the more likely it is to be correct. They also think they can apply their intelligence to any field, regardless of expertise.
It's not possible to answer your question as asked, IMO. There are a few issues.
1. Who are we considering to be "nerds" in this case? All smart people? Only techie smart people? All engineers? Only certain fields of engineering?
2. Even if nerds were defined, I'm curious why you think that. Are you basing it just on the people you know?
An article I read in 2004 or so compared how those who worked primarily with paragraphs versus those who worked primarily with numbers tended to vote (for Kerry versus for Bush). It ended up using librarians to illustrate the paragraphs example. (They were something like 20:1 in favor of Kerry compared to Bush.) Ignoring that the article forced a false binary system, it does seem to suggest that librarians, often viewed as nerdy, might not tend to be libertarian overall. The same article used a different but equally nerdy profession (I can't recall what it was right now) to demonstrate the other side, which was something not-quite-as-absurdly Bush-favoring.* Still, I'd say that there are a lot of types of nerds and pigeonholing them as a big group doesn't work particularly well. (Not even as a smaller group. There are big blocks of very conservative librarians, too. Just look up the debate over the Newbery Award snoozer, er, winner The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Phelan. Some librarians chose not to stock it because it used the word "scrotum" in the beginning of the book. The rest slapped an award on it and handed it to kids.)
*In that study, I always wondered how many people went "Well, I'm VOTING for X because I'm DAMNED if I want Y to win! I'd really rather they both pissed off."
(ftr, I love capitalism... it works. I'm happy!)
The capitalist model relies on there being tiers of society; and with each successive tier maximising the output of subsequent tiers. Broadly put into effect, we have a model - specially in the united states - where the capitalist interests are the substantiators (not a word) of law. Law being the rules that control the public, and method that ultimately mediates the presence of a tiered system.
The weird offshot of how this has panned out in the modern world is indifferent to what we might call "ideal". With the capability of almost unlimited travel in the modern age ("boarders haemorrhaging", we now have a system where the government no longer cares about the identity of its "multi-ethnic" citizens, it simply wants them to marry and become productive units (ahem, or 'members of society'). So where capitalism serves the interest of a nation of people, it is slowly eroding at the core and serving the nation in locality - this is directly attributable to the controlling interests of the law. (clue: big business!)
If we assume that independent success is located at the top of the capitalist pyramid model (and thus ignoring "wings of identity" given to celebrities and the like by the media - this is not a surviving success), we can also assume that those with a higher determination and informed ability (picking the right career, passing exams etc) have greater desire to and easier access to information.
My take of this whole capitalism thing is that we are naturally liberal through our the effect of our own humanity. The higher up the pyramid we get the more we realise the effect we have on others and thus the desire to do better. But this is only a desire. The higher up we traverse the pyramid, the more capitalist mechanisms ('assassinations', stock market crashes, share holders, mums) prevent use from being human (caring). So called 'Liberals' (humans) are thwarted by red tape and the autonomous desire of a capitalist entity (a business?) not to sacrifice profit - knowing that a competitor might take advantage?! We even have laws that prevent collusion between companies that might want to establish a working consensus about our future (granted these laws also stop them being greedy)
So, all in all, yay capitalism. It works. But at what price? As we mature and move to revoke controls that allow regime change (or 'regime reset'), we slowly begin to stagnate under our own rules of regime, rules of capitalism. The law needs to forget. The public needs to be empowered to create law.
The opposite of liberal? Self-serving? Self serving fits the capitalist model perfectly. I say that impressionable people are easily brainwashed in to believing the works of capitalist propagander - they do of course control the media.
I owe a lot of my weird thinking to "Learning Legal Rules" (Oxford University Press), that Zeitgeist movie (full of questionable
bollocks, but still asks interesting questions about the exploitation of others) and an English documentary by Al'Jazeera about exploited workers building the gulf... Ooo not to mention the movie Syriana (its quite good!)
Matt
I put in the phrase "direct harm" because it is all to easy to declare anything you want as an "indirect harm" without any justification. When I say "direct harm", there has to be actual clearly identifiable victims of that harm, and also clear, identifiable harm. Alas, much of what in politics and the law today that is declared "harm" isn't really.
So, in essence, unless you see me actually doing something that is clearly harming someone else, you are to leave me alone. And I, of course, will do likewise.
I have lost count of how many times in my own life, for instance, someone has phoned the police on me simply because they *thought* I was dangerous, regardless of the fact that I had not done anything wrong nor had any intentions of doing so. And that has caused much damage -- much harm -- to me and my family, and yet no one learns from this. Police still encourages the public to phone everything in at the drop of a hat. Then they go out and harass innocent individuals, doing harm to them.
If I were libertarian-leaning before, such experiences have firmly pushed me into that camp.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
I think conservatives (I mean real conservatives, not crooks) are more likely to be pratical oriented because they have to deal with practical issues and solve them. Absolutely not a Geek/Nerd area of general expertise.
As soon as Geeks grown up, have a wife and family of their own they usually become more conservative/pragmatic on their own. And less prone to romantic idealistic but unrealistic models of society.
I once read a phrase that went sort of like this: For a lib to become a rep just have him grow up, earn his own money and pay taxes. While it's cliche, there is some truth to it.
The differences between Lib and Rep in the US are mostly cosmetic anyway.
If you look at truely conservative people you'll also notice that these types are much more emotionally independant of a regulated gouvernation than libs (the real ones, not the propagandist 1968 losers).
In Germany (State of Bavaria) we have the strange effect of local goverment coalitions between ultra-conservative Christian-Social-Union and heavyly left-leaning Greens for that exact reason.
People would call me a leftist geek, but I share some views that people, outside of the context, would consider extreme right conservative. I personally like to think of my self as an above average intelligent person who is unlikely to fall for the left-vs-right petty turf war that so many people around the political globe endorse.
BTW: Machiavelli is an all-time classic and a nice read and can help to emancipate oneself from the standard political debate and get a more insightfull perspective on these things.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Well, the idea that I personally would vote out of self-interest is actually insulting. Voting is an act of governing. And to vote out of self-interest rather than out of an attempt to create a better society is, by definition, to allow corruption in this act of governing.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
mod me insightful!
That said, I'm not a stereotypical fundamentalist in all areas. I believe global warming is a real problem that has to be dealt with. I think George Bush screwed up in a big way in Iraq and other areas of policy. I'm skeptical of the capitalism, as it depends on an economic model that is destructive to our planet and favors the rich over the poor. In other words, I'm not just blindly fitting myself into one category of political / economic alignment. One group usually doesn't have all the answers.
Sure, maybe more nerds have long pony-tails than short hair, and maybe more have body odor than not. However, I think you'll find there's greater variety and diversity within this people-group we call "nerds" than is implied by the original post.
- Mike
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
I dont trust either the democrats or republicns as they each have their own brand of skewed horsemuffins to feed the public. I lean just ever so slightly to the left but not so far as to lose perspective like the extremist liberals do, personally I think most all the politicions in D.C. are more interested in money & prestege and their public image than actually doing what is right, I think the U.S. government is corrupted beyond repair and needs a good fdisking & reformating...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I am definitely libertarian minded (Ron Paul bumper sticker, going to vote for him in the NH primary)- and.. I'm definitely a nerd... well geek.. I dunno. Anyways, I think that libertarianism is the Nintendo of politics on /. am i rite guys? - that would definitely contribute to what the poster is seeing.
...unfortunately no one can be told what The Mat^H^H^HGoatse is...they must experience it for themselves...
But the beatles weren't science nerds.
Nerds live under the delusion that they can do great things in a vaccuum. In spite of their superior abilities and the obvious excellence of their work, they always seem to get blindsided at work by some asshole with better social skills. On the other hand America has, to now, been the powerhouse of the world because of the innovation created by these rugged individuals. As an example, I give you messers Wozniak and Jobs. Consider and discuss.
"3. You throw out a "failing" assessment of our economy without any qualifying sources to back up your assertion."
That's what happens when one gets their world view from the media. Yes the US is making quite a few mistakes. So is the rest of the world. Things are going to get difficult for some people, while others will benefit. That's been the world since societies formed. The main thing is the magnatude of these changes.
As far as I know democratic elections are based on votes - equal votes - one vote per person, wealthy or not. This equality must be a leftist idea then. No, I'm not a proponent of 'Big Government' (or 'Small Government') just 'Fair Government' just 'Enough Government'
Classical left views result from ilogical conclusions... as seen from a systemic understanding of sociology
Technology people are trained on systemic thinking, therefore percieve logical weakness in common political views from the left (and right)
Maybe there is also in this group a more dominant rationality that makes then less moved by classic emotional bonding in common left speechs
We work with ideas, maybe we tend to be idealists... some could say libertarism its an idealism
The fundamental concept of it is simple, and easily understood, but the the effects of it are complex, profound and clearly difficult to understand.
Lets take a flock of birds as an example. The flock itself is a complex, dynamic and extremely confusing system but the rules which govern that behaviour are very simple.
http://www.red3d.com/cwr/boids/
It's a similar principle with libertarianism, the result is emergent behaviour. The difference between socialists, conservatives and libertarians is that socialists and conservatives think the best way to run things is to put the flock into a box.
Deleted
...the one in the textbook, which says a Libertarian is socially liberal (allow same-sex marriage, keep the government out of our lives etc) and financially conservative (the free market is a good thing).
By that measure, I'm probably two parts Libertarian and one part Liberal (I.E. I think that the free-market system, with a few checks and oversights, is probably best).
What amazes me is that so many "Libertarians" seem to be pro-choice or for requiring the Pledge of Allegiance or for including "In God We Trust" on the currency. These positions appear populist to me -- that is, the opposite of what a true Libertarian (who would be for minimal government) would want.
I don't think that the current Libertarian party is truly Libertarian in all respects. Either that, or the textbook definition of Libertarian needs to be updated, even though the four basic types (Liberal -- Conservative on one axis, Libertarian -- Populist on the other) complement each other nicely in terms of making up a political spectrum where everyone more or less fits in somewhere.
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
When I hear people like Bill Maher profess that they are libertarians I shutter. I even doubt that most slashdot readers understand the term.
Check out www.politicalcompass.org and do the quiz and see what your leanings really are.
Remember a libertarian would not harp on Microsoft, would not have guns laws restricting the use of bazookas, and would not restrict people from following creationism. Libertarian means to live and let live, and most importantly it means for people to be idiots!
So I think I doubt that most people are libertarians....
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
"Why do so many nerds seem to lean toward the Libertarian end of the spectrum?"
Very few of anyone, nerds or not, lean towards the Libertarian end of the spectrum. This may be due to most people catching onto the inherent contradiction in thinking that (a) many people think like they do and (b) many people ought to think like they do. A CATO article about the 2004 and 2006 elections makes lots of noise about numbers like 10% and 20% for all kinds of reasons they seem to enjoy, before finally admitting a Rassmusen poll showed the real numbers to be about 2%. If the numbers varied as widely as CATO claimed for the various reasons given, the error bar would be so large as to make it all meaningless. I think this is the case.
The CATO article even tried to claim Jon Stewart for their own: "In a revealing exchange, Jon Stewart recently hosted neoconservative Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard on the Daily Show, often considered the de facto television news program for younger viewers. Kristol called Stewart an "Upper West Side liberal." To which Stewart quickly responded, "No, I'm a downtown libertarian."
I am reminded of Jon Stewart's commercial of a few years back, talking about people getting their news from The Daily Show. He ended the commercial by yelling "DON'T DO THAT. WE MAKE IT UP." He's a comedian. His show is on Comedy Central. File this as an example under the "they think people think like they do" part of the problem, along with CATO's over-confidence in badly done statistics.
I suspect another error in thinking, that of "if you criticize, you must disagree" has kicked in by now. Nothing I've said indicates my own political position. I've found many Libertarians to be particularly susceptible to this problem despite their claim to individualism in thinking. It makes Libertarianism look for all the world like a dogma of open mindedness. Still, that's way more fun than the dogma of narrow mindedness most others seem to fall into.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
"Because they see the average level of intelligence shown by those around them and don't want any of that lot deciding things for them?"
With the "intelligence" yardstick being the geek in question. Truely a skewed perspective if any. Would you be comfortable being judged by someone elses "yardstick" and found wanting. Maybe you shouldn't be permitted to be placed in a decision capacity. After all what applies to them, applies to you.
I've met quite a few people who describe themselves as Libertarian. From system administrators to cab drivers. I don't know if there's a majority of "nerds" that make up the party, but I do have a question about the party. The ideals sound all nice and stuff, but why are so many of the group such nut-cases? I don't mean that as a flame or anything. I've met 10+ people, and all of them exhibited signs of conspiracy theorists and gun crazies, etc. I could go on, but I think people get the point.
Libertarianism is just anothe over-simplistic political category which appeals to the young, individualistic and idealistic of which there are many in the Nerd world.
It appeals because it promotes simple moral black-and-whites, encourages self-centred success and the expense of society and persecutes those less apparently intelligent (those who bullied us at school).
Stick Men
A: Leftists will send you to the gulag. Liberals will send you to sensitivity training.
Seriously, I've been on the receiving end of so much hypocritical leftist/progressive control-freakishness to immunize me from their propaganda for life. They're all for freedom of speech so long as you agree with them. They make a fetish about government-run schools but send their kids to private schools. They try to make tax slaves out of the small business owners who are the backbone of the American economy, and everyone else who works for that matter. Let us alone!
A libertarian will tell you what you're doing wrong but leave it up to you to do something about it, unless the subject directly involves him, and even then. Leftists know what's good for you and will enforce their will whether you like it or not. Stalin was inevitable.
Libertarians understand economics. Leftists think that if you tax earnings 100% "the rich" won't give up and go play golf.
I've wound up being a conservative with libertarian tendencies. I like libertarian theory but it strikes me as a bit impractical.
I wonder if that has to do with illegality of prostitution, gambling, the war on drugs.... These items frequently show up on the libertarians lists of justifications for their ideology. Without these, a big chunk of motivation would probably be gone. And guess what, most of these are legal in most european countries. The war on drugs exists, but small amounts of reasonable drugs that geeks would use, like marihuana, usually won't get you in jail. Plus it is usually the leftist parties that actually do want to end the war on drugs.
The interesting thing about you noticing that libertarians are often antisocial is that they actually shouldn't. The whole premise of libertarianism utopia of a better future is based on individuals responsibilities and abilites. So only somebody, who genuinely loves human beings and believes humans by and large to be capable and responible, should be a libertarian.
The last report showed our economy growing at a 4% clip. (It would have been 10% but our schools are socialized.) Go capitalism!
if you went to a discussion board on politics and asked them for advice about walking robots or gpl then would you expect to get a decent answer?
without wanting to be unkind, it doesn't seem that strange to find that there are people with a fairly crude level of political sophistication here on slashdot; in terms of social and emotional development, its should be obvious what to expect.
having said that, i would say there is a fairly broad spectrum of opinions and progressive thought tends to be quite well represented, as you would expect when there are people present from a scientific background.
Read it many years ago, in fact my first semester of undergrad. I'm still a libertarian. Why?
I do not believe that Government is the answer to a lot a problem, certainly not the federal government.
Taxes should be used to fund the government and (federal) government should be limited to areas such as forign diplomacy, defense, and infrastructure. Taxes are not to be used to redistribute wealth based on income from group to another group.
The Department of Education should be scrapped. All it has done is produce too many rules, burocaracy, and the quality of educatin in the United States continues to decline. I am now in Grad School for political science and continually have freshman students that have no idea how municipal governments function or what a referendum is or that Dick Durbin is the Senior Senator of Illinois (where I am), not Barak Obama. What the hell ever happened to "Civics classes" in this country? Hell, half of them think municipal means a furry animal from Australia! (Although I had to take a step back when I realized that many in this College Freshman class were born AFTER the Berlin Wall fell. To them the USSR never existed.)
Same for the IRS (Go to a Value Added Tax/National Sales tax/Fair tax). Again, taxes should be collected to fund the government, not play Robin Hood.
Smoke and drink what you want. But if you get behind the wheel impaired, and kill someone, you loose the privilege to drive forever! (Ask the Germans about driving drunk on the Highway)
People have a right to privacy. That means what goes on to their bedroom is none of my, and by extention, the government's damned business. Period.
No one has the "right" to get married. Gay, straight, or otherwise. No where in the Bill of Rights do I see the word "marriage" in any form or fashion. So Gay Rights folks, you've got it wrong. But, hey, I like to tick off all sides so let's take this a step further: Marriage in the eyes of the state is really nothing more than a joint property contract. From that perspective, does it really matter if it's man and woman or woman and woman, or man and man? No I don't think so. So here's what we do, what to get married in a good ole Bible Thumping Church: do it. But instead of signing a "Marriage Licenses" call it "A Domestic Partnership" for everyone! Two guys and want to live together and with ability to share things like insurance policies, etc. Fine, form a Domestic Partnership. Marriage is a sacrament, not a legal right.
Now that's not to say that all government is bad. I like the FDA, FTC, NTSB, FAA, and even the DMV...sometimes. Not everyone should be allowed to jump into the cockpit of a plane and fly around. Same with driving a car, and damn it, I'd like to know that the Asprin I take is reasonable safe (unless it comes from China these days) But I believe that people should have the freedom to live as they choose so long as it doesn't affect other people. That also includes the ability to fail!
Oh and Social Security. Did you know a loophole in a law in the early 1980's allowed several county governments to withdraw their employees from the Social Security system? This was in Texas and they ran like hell. So what did the county do? They took still deducted the same percentage as Social Security would have taken and instead invested it into personal a retirement savings account for that employee. And you know what happened? Did they end going broke and have nothing less? No! As they now retire they are getting about three times what they would be drawing per month on Social Security. Hell, many are now making more in retirement per month than they did when they were working! Yet when Bush and company suggest taking 1% of what you pay into social security all hell breaks loose. Okay, then let's compare Pensions in Europe (the bastion of none free think socialism) and Chile. Better yet, I'll let you all look that one up.
And finally, enough with all this Demcroracy bullshit. Democracy is
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
And the spelling errors are the lack of coffee at 6AM after going to bed around 1AM after grading quizzes last night over things like referendums. In fact, if I teach this class next semester or next year, I am going to going to hold a referendum on whether to give the quiz. If more than half the class doesn't know what a referendum is, we're having a quiz every class...
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
The issues at hand will not be solved with simplistic political labels, sound-bites; nor will they be solved by religious adherence to ideologies. The problem must be understood for what it is, then action taken to remedy the problem and to give the maximum amount of autonomy and power back to the individual and the concentrated centers of uber-power must come to an end.
These things are not simple to solves, nor will they be solved overnight or even in our lifetimes. But if we are willing, we can begin to take the first meaningful steps towards the solution.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
Nerds have to be, in order to be nerds, independent thinkers. To have any serious problem solving skills requires a mind free to explore options, and thus good problem solvers tend to reject authority. Unfortunately, the American political discourse shapes how American nerds express this rejection of authority. For a start, Americans have the idea of socialism=big government constantly drilled into them. Most modern socialists want to [i]reduce[/i] the scope of government. We were actually paying attention in 1989, you know, and the horrors of the USSR and its satellites have had a great effect on socialist thinking. I consider myself a libertarian socialist - a term that has been around for about 150 years, but to most Americans would sound like an absurd oxymoron (Like Fascist Anarchist or something). This is a position that most of you will simply not have heard of or considered, because the political discourse in your media suggests to you that capitalism is an synonym for freedom. This idea is so ingrained in your culture, many of you think George Orwell was opposed to socialism! As an anti-authoritarian in America, right-libertarianism is the only option presented to you. So why have I (and many others) expressed our anti-authoritarian tenancies to the left instead of the right? Simply put: Capitalism doesn't work. No, seriously. Capitalism is a system of allocating resources - and in this world there is enough food produced to give everyone 3000 calories per day, but according to UN figures 9 million day a year from starvation and most of those are small children. I think such a system of allocating resources really, really sucks. Lets find an alternative. By the way, this website may be informative for going beyond traditional left/right stereotypes. http://www.politicalcompass.org/
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Because nerds view technocracy as being the closest to meritocracy and technocracy is very close to libertarianism. But it's not quite the same. For example, most nerds would disagree with libertarianists on education. Here we go: http://dasuperwiz.blogspot.com/2007/05/progress-an d-nihilism.html
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Vroomfondle: We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty.
Douglas Adams was right. This question is degenerating into the same sort of scenario as Vroomfondle and Majikthise had with Deep Thought.
Then here is your answer from Deep Thought him/her/it's self.
Choosing Libertarian is mostly a question of fusing both sides of the political wings into one. Keeping the general liberal social attitudes of the left with the self-defense and financial responsibilities from the Right. Conspicuously absent is such things as obvious save-the-gay-baby-whales-hippy-granola boondoggles from the left and the right's pandering to theocratic christers.
frankly I got tired of watching both parties try to morph into each other every election depending on the mood of the day.
Fiscal conservatives I can deal with Government should be accountable on as to the books and stay out of personal matters. Defense, Police, Disaster relief, public safety. These are the business of government.
on the other hand, I don't give a rats ass who sleeps with who in private, likewise I don't like someone else sticking their nose into bedrooms looking for stuff they have no right to. Social Conservatives make me think of guys like Foley, Craig, and Limbaugh. Two faced jerks with a agenda of sleaze.
As to the Left, the hippy stuff just bugs me that all. I don't like drum circles nuff said.
Government should stay the hell out of area of Doubt and Uncertainty. That is what most of politic is so there.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
I'd say that you are a good case in point.
the way you have expressed yourself here makes it very clear that you have a simplistic and very limited understanding of these matters, and yet, you're not at all afraid to speak out. quite right too.
as a leftist, i would never argue that you shouldn't have the right to express your opinion, i would merely suggest that you deserve to be ignored.
most of the time you will be left to your own devices of course (no pun intended), the problem is that the people that won't ignore you are a sophisticated and determined elite, and with whom your views coincide quite usefully (for them). it is this destructive little bunch do need to be stopped.
although clearly not dangerous or powerful in yourself, you end up as a tool, in more ways that one.
Quite ironic that he considers himself "smarter," yet he fails at basic logic, as you've just proven.
If you are a big oil tycoon, you would say that capitalism works. If you are some starving kid in Ethopia, you would say that capitalism fails. So, who is "right" and who is "wrong"?
The sad thing from a human perspective is that any complex adaptive system must have *components* that not only will fail, but must be allowed to fail. Evolution could not have happened without the elimination of those components "less fit". When we are talking about *humans* as those components from a *human* perspective, it sound cruel and evil. But look up and down the spectrum in nature, from the smallest of living cells to the largest of complex organisms, and you will see the same principles in practice.
Simply put, nature does not care one iota about human morality. And therein lies the true dilemma. We can harp all we want about how it's "unfair", but that will not change how nature operates.
I am not saying, of course, that we should ignore the starving kids in the world. But at the same time, we should understand something about the nature of the complex systems we are dealing with and what laws -- mathematical and scientific, not human-created -- drives them.
Only then will true, pragmatic, workable, long-term, sustainable solutions emerge, and not before!
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
I love you.
11 was a racehorse
12 was 12
1111 Race
12112
If the continent that started two world wars, nazism, and communism thinks I'm a nutcase then I can live with that.
And engineer types are notoriously easy to fool with simplistic explanations of complex matters. Especially when said explanation removes emotional and social aspects from the complex matter, making it attractive in a way that many would not admit even to themselves. Combine this with how the stereotypical geek avoids the physical reality wherever possible (thus leaving him ill-equipped in the sense of proportion department) and boom, there you go.
Thus piles of geeks who think that playground economics explains all aspects of society and should thus be allowed to dominate. "Vote with your wallet" and so forth.
The slashdot poll on this subject should be a pretty good indication that there is a majority of lefty nerds. There's a good number of conservatives too though.
If we have higher than average economic success, then why do so many of us spend our lives in our mother's basement until we're 40 watching Star Trek reruns? Or is that just the leftists...
There are two types of people in the world; those who wish to control others and those that have no such desires.
Most of us are Liberals because we have been educated and understand what the world really needs and most of us are not greedy oil lovers. We look forward to change and hope for the future.
There is no such thing as "Libertarianism." It is simply a cover for the extreme right-wing, of which we have aplenty in the U.S. The extreme right wants to do away with government altogether, and replace it with a for-profit corporate state. The absolute nuttiness of this approach to government is reflected in the recent proposals by President Bush and Rudolph Giuliani that the solution to the health care crisis in the U.S. is to have people buy their own health insurance.
Every one of them hopes to becomes Buffy's next watcher?
The only thing in which conservatives pundits have been wildly successful, is making 'liberal' practically a dirty word. I would suggest that nearly every time one of them uses the word 'liberal', one could substitute 'n*gger', and the message would only become moderately more hateful.
The American Constitution espouses ideals that are rather libertarian. Thus anyone who considers themselves as an "American" would likely hold such ideals, as well. So libertarianism should be the baseline when it comes to America. Regardless of intelligence, anybody who considers himself or herself American should also consider himself or herself to be libertarian.
I don't think we should look at "nerds" as being above and beyond people in general, in terms of intelligence. Most of us are actually just where we should be, at the baseline. The same goes for our political beliefs. Many of us are libertarian because as Americans, that's just how we should think.
The problem arises because most Americans are not at that baseline. They're quite far below it. So they buy into the crap spewed out by the Republicans and Democrats. They buy into the fecal delight from the entertainment outfits in Hollywood and New York. So these people have lost sight of what it truly means to be American, as outlined by the American Constitution. The mere fact that they're not libertarian means that they probably shouldn't be considered American, either.
That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves. -- Coyote in Green Mars
What?
I'm an intelligent guy like you.
The reason I'm against the left is because in my country, Malta, it has been shown to be NON-DEMOCRATIC. It has repeatedly threatened democracy in my country. When I was a kid I had to go to a private person's garage as our schools were closed by the Labour leftist government.. we couldn't have an education thanks to the thugs who threatened our country.
One of the labour candidates has been reported as saying the nationalists better be afraid if labour wins the elections next year. Cause the government will be for leftists only. Not for the whole country. And the rest will pay, he said.
So as an intelligent person I will not support this stuff which threatens my democracy. Remember just a while ago all the leftist rhetoric against the EU... I don't forget that either.
The left - labour - will try to remove us from europe if they get elected. And other democratic rights will go down the drain, like the right to private property. We'll have communist style requisitions again for one. No thanks.
Now you know why I'm not leftist.
One of the more vocal FOSS advocates defines libertarianism here.
He self-designates as an anarchist (often considered far-to-the-left) but I suspect many would call him a right-libertarian.
As for me, I grew up in several hyper-authoritarian countries (Marcos's Philippines, Lee's Singapore, Park's Korea) and saw the negative effects of such authoritarianism. A trip to Panmunjeom on the border between North and South Korea pushed me over the edge into libertarian thinking. Seeing farmers doing their harvesting being herded by uniformed men with guns left a permanent negative afterimage in my brain. Taking a look at the two Koreas from space at night continues to persuade me that authoritarian governments are bad for humanity.
I was not a geek then (I was an English major who was teaching English as a Second Language at the time) but became a geek later, partly because I saw ("Revenge of the Nerds") the revolutionary possibilities provided by technology. For example, a geek named Dee Hock revolutionized business and commerce by inventing the credit card, one of the tools of a society where individuals are empowered to control governments rather than vice-versa.
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
Right wingers usually have problems informing themselves whereas I find the left often emotionally attached to their arguments.
I think that once you can process a lot of information you develop a worldview that is more pragmatic and analytical than political, it only becomes political when you have to present your ideas to others.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
It was wrong even at the time of our grand(-grand-)parents. The role of the state in left/socialist theory (and praxis) has been disputed since the beginning. (e.g. Bakunin vs. Marx in the 1870s)
There are a lot different flavours of socialism. In the US you had Murray Bookchin a libetarian socialist. Then you have different anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist flavours all around the earth and they were and are strictly anti-state/anti-government and leftist.
And to your Empire I would like to add at least John Holloway's works.
That leftist are pro-state pigheads stuck in early 20th century ideology is just FUD.
"Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
"So you think that money is the root of all evil? Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?"(1)
We are familiar with the works of Mises and Rothbard and have seen what government actions have done on so many levels. Why do so many Canadians come to America for medical care even with socialized medicine in their home country (Cleavland is the hip replacement capital of America)? Why is there such a large shortage of doctors in Germany (they get paid a good and fair wage of $12/hour)? Why is it that all of the people America is at war with today were our 'friends' 20 years ago? It is because of these and many other examples that nerds embrace libertarian principles.
To quote Dennis Leary from Demolition Man, "I want high cholesterol! I wanna eat bacon, and butter, and buckets of cheese, okay?! I wanna smoke a Cuban cigar the size of Cincinnati in the non-smoking section! I wanna run naked through the street, with green Jell-O all over my body, reading Playboy magazine. Why? Because I suddenly may feel the need to, okay, pal?"
(1) Any Rand, Atlas Shrugged
I happen to be a moral conservative Libertarian - while I would never use drugs or have an abortion performed on someone at my request, I don't believe it is government's job to tell you what to think. Or even my job, for that matter.
Because a fairly large proportion of nerds are as smart as they think they are, and recognise that a code of ethics goes both ways. Liberals, on the other hand, overestimate themselves. All they know is their modus operandi. Their political philosophy rooted in the way a spoiled brat thinks: I can get what I want through coercive means and demonize anyone who protests.
My instinct as a nerd is libertarian, and it took me a little while to understand why:
Being a nerd means being different. Many of us have that "nerd complex" that helps us celebrate our diversity and our ability to do things and think things differently. Consequently, there's a great importance placed on the individual and the liberty of doing unusual things. Authority figures, who always found things simpler when everyone behaves and thinks the same way, are treated with great suspicion. Nerds understands the plight of people living in the fringes of the law and outside the fringes of orthodox morality, since they were often outsiders themselves as kids.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
What I thought this story was asking when I first saw it.
"Why Are So Many Nerds Librarians?"
What a nerdy response. You must be a Libertarian. And well off.
AC
I am now retired from a life in technology, developing scientific instruments and software. I am now also a far left liberal. In college I read Ayn Rand and thought that was how things should work. Well I think that this is just the need for successful or fortunate people to believe that their success is due to their own superiority. I have now come to believe that luck and birth situation is really what determines how successful most people are.
It's not that there are a lot of libertarian nerds, it's just that the libertarians shout the loudest and, well, most dense, as they ignore all rational arguments that might discredit their views.
You're probably right about the affluence argument though, a disproportionate number seem to be the "I got mine" crowd, who know that they will be on the top of the pyramid, benefiting rather than suffering from the vast inequality that libertarianism will cause.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Libertarinism is like (utopian) science fiction. Not that other idealistic political groups are much different. But libertarianism is an outsider group in America, and many geeks are outsiders. It has that "if everyone just listened to my simply brilliance everything would be okay" flavor. The truth is that the real world is much messier than fiction.
The truth is; and this goes for a wide-spectrum of political beliefs although I think it has a bias to the left...
Everybody thinks everybody else is just like themselves. They think that because they wouldn't choose to interfere with other peoples lives that people won't choose to interfere with theirs.
Then you get the far-right; the people who know that people will try to screw with their lives. They know this, because thats what they do. Of course, they also believe everyone else is just like them too. They tend to get paranoid when people aren't screwing with them.
is one where the rest of the team members don't show up for meetings except Me, Myself, and I. We can get so much done in such a short time that the whole process is a cinch and really does not detract from the day at all. Besides, the rest were only there to say that they have a meeting to attend to...
Plenty of the early songs were group efforts by Lennon and McCartney. The big hits like In My Life, She Loves You, Love Me Do and Please Please Me were written by the pair together. One of their last compositions together, A Day In The Life (my personal vote for greatest Beatles song) was also written by both of them.
They, like any great team, had areas of specialty. McCartney was (and still is) a master of melody, while Lennon was far better at the middle eighth. The two complimented each other, leading to one of the most stunning list of hit singles in the history of modern music.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
government.
:-)
Most of them seem to think government causes more problems than it solves. They believe government is intrinsically inept, corrupt, and oppressive. They believe in unfettered competition because competition always produces the best results. They think most people prefer to have big government because they are too lazy or too stupid to do things for themselves. Finally, for many they are just frustrated with stupid, corrupt, politicians from both parties.
In fact most of them benefit significantly from the government and just refuse to acknowledge it or are ignorant. Most of them overestimate their individual abilities and don't realize that they wouldn't survive for a second in the world they propose we live in. They are like those people who would like to live in the middle ages because they think it was like the fantasy stories they read about in books. The unspoken assumption being that they would be a prince or princess. In reality they probably wouldn't have made it past birth and if they did they would be farming some miserable plot of land in the middle of nowhere trying not to starve to death.
It's an amazing bit of intrinsically American naivete. That being said, I am a libertarian.
Ok, now, go ahead, and mark me as a troll.
The reason so many people (not just geeks) end up moving to a Libertarian point of view (and therefore a Federalist point of view) is simply because the Libertarian believe in limited government and relying on individuals and small communities to determine what is best for the way they live.
People, well primarily leftists, complain about the "bad" influence that the "right wing" has over the United States, whether true or not, they believe there is an influence and they don't like it. On the other hand, that "right wing" believes the lefties have a "bad" influence over the country.
In both cases, both the hard-core ring wingers and the hard-core left wingers are the major voices that cause the most stir. Both try to espouse their views on the rest of the nation, both try to be the guys who claim the "moral high ground" when it comes to issues. (And don't tell me left doesn't, with legislative moves like socialized welfare, social security and socialized medicine all with the guise of "helping all Americans").
Those who find themselves not impressed by either side of the argument find themselves somewhat lost and uninvolved in the political discussion. They tend to stick with a political party because either they've been part of the same party for years or because they take on the same political party their parents were.
Libertarians (and federalists), on the other hand, offer a new vision where the federal government provides the very basic services to the nation and let's the states or even the local communities decide how they want to run their localities. Should there be socialized medicine? Maybe in Wisconsin, but not Nebraska. Should the federal government force Nebraska to institute socialized medicine? No, that's their choice. Nebraskans feel they have a different situation than those in Wisconsin and that providing their own healthcare is the best way for themselves to live. (This is hypothetical). The point is, libertarians believe you can still live in the best country of the world, but not be forced into a social situation you do not like.
We can go on all day with examples, but another would be abortion. Another hypothetical example is... New York is okay with abortion, Ohio says its illegal. So, there will be people who chose to live in Ohio and there will be people who chose to live in New York. This is not a morality or political discussion, this is simply about letting people believe what they WANT to believe and leaving them alone about it.
Nerds are typically highly intelligent, primary rational over emotional beings.
Liberitarian = economically liberal + socially liberal
Highly intelligent => economically successful => winners in a liberal system => economically liberal
Primary rational => less emotional => projects less emotion on others's behavior => socially liberal
Personally, I'm leaning a lot more towards safety nets like universal healthcare, social benefits etc. That doesn't mean I like lazy bums that do nothing but leech off the security system any more than you do. It means a lot of people get screwed over by bad luck "Hey, you fell ill" or "Hey, your company decided to downsize". Sure helping them out is a positive right but so's a police force and justice system, since the government's paying. In both cases it's a form of collective insurance against acts that you have little or no control over yourself like "Hey, someone decided to rob my house".
Obviously, I need to qualify that since people drink, smoke, take drugs, get obese, do extreme sports and any number of activities that can have deterimental effects on their health. But a friend of mine got cancer at 16, he was doing sports, never drank alcohol and never smoked up to that point. Someone else I know had a kid with MS, how's any of that their fault? Sure isn't. And there's borderline cases like being hit by a car when crossing the street, is that the driver's fault, your fault or noones? Depends, I guess. Ultimately, I think there's better value in helping everyone than the overhead of trying to deal out medical justice.
At this point, everyone and their mother in the US go like "everyone would bum around without a job, crowd the hospitals and society would collapse in on itself". No, they wouldn't. In my country we've got execellent social security and an unemployment rate of 2.7%, which is no more than you need to cope with changing demand for different skills. That's right, 97.3% choose to work. Having experienced the paperwork a relative of mine had to go through to get her disabilities pension (well deserved, I might add) it's not like you can easily fake your way out of the job market. Ok, there was a big fraud case recently but that involved corrupt doctors faking the paperwork.
And whoever has had to deal with hospitals wouldn't spout that bullshit about universal healthcare either. Going to the doctor, staying in a hospital is overall a very drab and annoying experience. You don't go there unless there's something wrong with your health and you need help, it's not like going to Disneyland. You don't get free medication or equipment unless you have a medical need. Last time I tried to tell about it, some (clearly US) person claimed hearing aids would be lying in the streets because people would gut them for batteries. You just have to laugh at the ridiculous FUD liberitarian nutjobs try to pull.
With all that said, once you pass that lower threshold I'm fairly liberal economically. I don't have a problem with people making millions and that they should try to be beaten down because "nobody deserves that much". It's not a "Robin Hood" society I want, where we only take from the rich and give to the poor. It's a society where most people chip in so everyone has a safety net, because anybody could be that next person to need it. Beyond that, let the competition begin.
Oh yeah and another boundary on my economic liberalism - I believe in the competitive market, not the free market. That's not to say we shouldn't encourage companies to cease markets through better products and lower prices. But it does mean I think there should be strong protections against attempts to monopolize markets through abusing market power, lock-ins, excluding competitors from important market arenas and distribution channels, creating artifical barriers to entry, price dumping and other nefarious practises. A completely unchecked monopoly is pretty much the worst nightmare, it doesn't even give the pretense of serving the consumers.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Duh!
Well I'm a Libertarian and I guess you could say I'm a nerd though I'm pretty sure I am not...
Sure, I write software for a living but is it the career that defines a nerd? Dr. Feynman would probably be considered a nerd but he didn't fit the other stereotypes associated with nerdiness and I've seen/met plenty of nerds with "cool" or otherwise shitty jobs so are they not nerds? I would have to say there are quite a few nerds in the department of the company I work in... they have few ideas of the mores and the faux pas they commit. They are nice people at heart but they have no idea the egos they deflate, their hapless attempts at daily conversation are often insulting to non-nerds who aren't kind. So I guess I'm not a nerd libertarian or maybe I am, whatever.
Why do I think there are so many nerds who are libertarians? At the office I think it's because the uninformed liberals and conservatives just like to trumpet their causes like cheerleaders and us nerds just quietly disagree. At home I believe it is because we have a truer sense of what freedom is and means and the social responsibility of having to work hard to improve the living conditions around us and for us. Of course, I am a Libertarian and not often a political thinker so my thoughts and opinions are skewed and uninformed to the reasoning behind this as well.
I am a firm believer that one should not discuss politics. Not because it shouldn't be discussed but at least in my country (USA), 95% of the population is too immature to have an honest and open discussion about their true political thoughts and usually we're worse than children when it comes to this topic. Maybe not so much the 3rd party people but more often I encounter this among people of the big 2 political parties we have. Hopefully I am completely wrong and I am just not meeting mature Republicans and Democrats but the ones I know or have met or see on tv act like a bunch of babies.
perhaps you meant patchouli?
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
Because so many nerds are oblivious to society, and libertarianism is a very oblivious political philosophy. It starts off with assuming anarchy, and then replaces any occurence of 'violence' with 'money'. Never mind that a libertarian society would inherit an old system in which people already have, or don't have a lot of money. Never mind that people would like to be able to _trust_ certain institutions a tad beyond 'I've paid them'. Never mind that people expect all sorts of emotional things from leaders that money won't ever be able to buy.
But it can work for you, if you're insular, unemotional, marketable and oblivious, but take any of these characteristics away from a person and libertarianism starts to fall apart for them. And that's the majority of society I'm talking about. It might not seem that way on slashdot, but it is.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Geeks are the few people who are able to anticipate the systemic effects of fuzzy interfaces. We want your code to be tight, our top and bottom-half handlers to be short, our scheduling systems to be fair. We demand the same things of our government: minimal waste, only do what is needed, and no special class citizens. I've studied a good deal of American history (out of school) and I have learned what the original function of government is (in America) it was to protect the RIGHTS of the people. The problem today is we feel the government should do so much more. This is akin to blending kernel and user space. Most of the time, we can accomplish the effect, and would desire it, but we don't see it as the role of the government. When you bring the government into it, the costs get socialized, that is, distributed on everyone in the form of taxes that we can't really control or object to. Generally, anything that does not fit the role of protecting rights comes at a financial advantage to someone, and that advantage is gleamed off the backs of the tax payer. Why should I pay for airline bail outs? Why should we bail out lenders who made stupid lending decisions? I am paying for all of that in my taxes. Why should I be deprived of my money because someone else made bad decisions. I can understand that the industry itself is needed, but now we have set precedent for the next time. Lenders will be further encouraged to make bad decisions, the airlines will give million dollar bonuses, and we'll have to pay for their bailouts again in our taxes. Same thing goes for New Orleans. All the nostalgia is worth nothing to a city on the water where much if it sits under water. Yet we let people rebuild. I am ok with that - you have the right to be dumb - as long as they don't use my tax money and instead use their private money or insurance money.
Then there is the war. We announced we'd be pumping $20B into Saudi Arabia in the form of arms, and then we announce a $30B deal with Israel. When will we realize pumping military hardware into the middle east isn't going to fix anything. It certainly hasn't fixed it since we started...
Our sense of entitlement is growing in this country, and we (as a nation) think the government should provide it. But nothing is further from the truth. Some people now say that health care is a RIGHT. It really isn't you have to remember that 'health care' is an industry that invents new ways for us to spend money. It is a pink elephant in the herd of gray elephants. No other 'right' invents new ways you can spend it. No other 'right' would interfere with others as much. Rights are internal. It is something that natural law or the government allows you do do in special cases that could not normally be done. It is instead a convenience, as you could accomplish it simply by spending more - yourself - on your health insurance (Which we still will all do, just in the form of taxes -- See the funding section of the national health care bill). And if we bring this back to what the kernel of government is supposed to do, we find it's not a right, and the government should have no involvement in it, because it is accomplishable by a user-space program.
And I think this best sums it up: Libertarians see the government as a kernel, and the rest of Americans see the government more of a service that provides the same comprehensive service our parents provided us before we moved out. I call this "transference syndrome" because the person cannot fathom being responsible for themselves so they move the parental role to the government.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Only a nerd can make it through Atlas Shrugged. Let alone think that its anti-emotion, anti-cooperation, and anti-social message is a good idea.
My political beliefs have diverged considerably, at one point I would have considered myself a Libertarian (my parents do: One's a Windows Systems Administrator, the other, a Broadcast Automation Engineer, anecdotal I know) I have noticed a tendency of *U.S.* geeks to identify strongly with the Libertarian Party (and/or conversely: Free-Market Economics/ideology). However no such tendency exists amongst my international geeky friends. I've also noticed, in non-tech circles it tends to correlate strongly (again, anecdotal) with two factors: The socio-economic status you were raised in, and the cultural demographic you were raised in. In general I've seen it as being more common in those who were *raised* in upward-mobile households, in generally homogeneous environments.
Now, my own beliefs have ran the gamut from anarcho-syndicalist, socialist, and libertarian. My current ones don't really fit into any of those boxes. I will however speak briefly on why Libertarianism appeals to so much to those I have described above, and also why I no longer adhere to it.
In short: It's simplistic, and self-serving. Before anyone jumps on me, I'm talking about the lay-literature and lay-foundations of the mindset. Libertarianism's strongest adherents are generally those who understand the least about the economics and politics behind it. Rather, they like the rosy sounding platitudes of the common liturgy. This is not a fault specific to Libertarianism: Pick a random Evangelical Christian off the street, and ask him what the council of Nicea is.
However, I think a great disservice is done by some of the great minds which publish much of the Libertarian cannon today. They dumb down rather complex economic phenomena and theory, into very simplistic black and white terms, which are both intellectually dishonest and which they don't honestly really believe themselves. Moreover, they purposely gloss over things which do not so nicely fit into the rosy picture they've painted (competing freedoms, public goods, market failure, moral hazards, gross negative incentives, tragedy of the anti-commons, externalities, etc.)
The average member of the public, in the same way that the average Christian does not know what the council of Nicea is, does not even know that such things exist within the cannon of thought, they are purposely insulated from it. Such things are occult and apocrypha from them. Ergo, It approaches literally a rather simplistic semi-religious ideology in scope, for the vast majority of adherents. I've had discussions where if you only switched a few words around, they would sound exactly like a Leninist, the same sort of blind ideological fervor (Particularly from Randians).
I've simply accepted that things aren't that cut and dry, and people aren't that simple. And to paraphrase a similar quote: If markets are so good, but our institutions so awful...why would they continue anyways? You know, competition and all.
We all know it from the movies, the bad-guy making bad decisions because none of his underlings dare to speak out against him.
In everyday live we are ALL guilty of this, we tend to surround ourselves with people we like. If you are an intelligent socialist, you will probably not want to spend to much time around a rabid capatilist (guess which way my political leaning goes). Your social circel tends to confirm to your own views of the world because you do not make friends with your enemy.
There is a very real danger to this as people tend to forget that this happens and then leap to conclusions like the original poster that "hey my friends are like this, therefore the world is like this".
In politics it leads to people on the left claiming that there is no immigration problem, because hey, all the immigrants they know are nice enough people, both of them. On the right it leads to people claiming that success/failure is of your own design because they know plenty of self-made millionairs and no homeless people at all.
Nerds/geeks whatever are NOT a solid group of people, hell, you can't even get them to agree what Star Trek series is the best (Original offcourse) let alone decide on a political leaning.
"the beatles weren't science nerds.
Probably not, but the "Thomas the tank engine" thing makes me think Ringo might be a closet nerd.
Einstien wasn't a Libertarian either, but Newton was certainly selfish enough to qualify. Not that there's anything wrong with being selfish, it's part of being human. Just so long as these new-fangled Libertarian's don't bitch and moan (or shoot up their school/workplace) when someone "does on to them" first.
People with the twin gifts of genius and humilty are rare (I have neither), Einstien and others such as Sagan point to a "bigger picture" when they write about humanity's place in the cosmos. OTOH we have Newton, clearly the superior "genius", scribbling a million words (literally) on the "meaning of 666" and coming up with an impressive 6x6 magic square.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I wonder why the same crowd that complains about their low IT paycheck, or outsourcing to India, also worships the infallible free market.
Well, aside from a general description of my life, you could of course find out more about me at the link to my web site below.
See, if most of us are, then all of society does it at its own expense. Thus, this nullifies the assumption that it's a few gaining at the expense of many.
Ah, finally something that's a challenge! :-)
You must've been to my website then, where you will clearly see I have a patent to a GUI system I created some years back. Now, I have seen -- and been a part of -- many discussions against software patents, and their merits or lack of the same. However, you did not specify software patents, but patents in general, so let's talk about that.
The whole idea behind patents is to give a temporary monolopy to the inventor so that he'd be willing to invest the capital to produce a useful product out of that invention that *the many* may benefit from.
It is not a perfect solution, but in all honesty, would you be willing to invest the millions of dollars it would take to bring your idea to market if your competitors could copy your ideas willy-nilly and beat you to the punch? Probably not. You are given a reasonable amount of time to capitalize on your idea, then it becomes available for everyone to jump in on the bandwagon after you have made your mark. In this fashion, it is supposed to encourage inventors to come forward and put out the sweat to create new products that will improve the lives of us all. And certainly this has happened -- just look around your room. I'm sure you'll see many devices and what not that never would've seen the light of day were it not for patents. Thus, you yourself have benefited from this temporary monopoly that you now criticise, even as much as you are using the same technology to portray your dissent!!!!!!!!
So how can you sit there and declare that patents "cost the rest of us" when clearly you are demonstrating otherwise by your own daily use of the same technologies that were spurred by patents?
Now, like I said, patents are not perfect. Big Corporations are misusing them to beat up on each other to gain an edge in the marketplace, in ways patents were never intended to be used. That I do see as a problem, but more for big corporations, not so much for us little guys.
So, if you are so against patents, how else is a struggling inventor suppose to receive incentives to carry an idea to the market so that the rest of us may benefit?
The same can be said, of course, for copyright. Many would be less inclined to produce works if they thought others could just publish and benefit from without providing due and just compensation. And yes, there are many abuses in that arena as well.
Newsflash: We all act selfishly, and that actually is a good thing. What we need to be careful of, of course, is that our selfishness, as individuals, does not lead to the direct harm of others. And in many cases, our selfishness does lead to the benefit of others in many ways direct and indirect. If I go out and make a purchase to satisfy my selfish desires, have I not also benefited the one I made a purchase from? And would I not be far more inclined to make selfish purchases than to simply give my money away? And if everyone simply gave money away, where would be incentives to provide goods and services where we could all benefit in the long -- and short -- run?
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
Once the place is back in the condition in wich you found it (before you blew up the power, the water, the sewers, the bridges and roads and airports, let the hospitals and museums be looted, etc.), then you can leave. But until then, take resposibility for the consequences of your actions.
That being said, if you want out of Iraq: Ron Paul for president! At least he won't make things worse.
You can't take the sky from me...
Okay, then let's compare Pensions in Europe (the bastion of none free think socialism) and Chile. Better yet, I'll let you all look that one up.
If I were you, I wouldn't use Chile as an example of a private pension plan working. The average return for people who went into the private system is lower than that of those who stuck with the public system, and overhead costs in the private system (run by a few for-profit companies) are significantly larger than that in the public system. Look into Thatcher's system in Britain for another great example of private overhead costs eating away pension money contrasted to the 1% overhead in America's Social Security system.
Also, the entire reason for social security is to provide security in old age and not a system of haves and have-nots based on how well/lucky they invested -- like Chile's system did -- and to protect against elderly poverty -- like Chile's system didn't.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Let us start by the definitions. By "Libertarian", I assume you mean someone who on the political compass tends towards the southeast quadrant (favours high social freedom and low/no state intervention in economic affairs). If that is the case, then I beg to differ. Me and most of my geek friends tend towards the far southwest quadrant. I would go as far as saying that is default assumption around here (I am european) when I meet someone who is intelligent and "geeky".
There are some huge problems with the libertarian philosophy. Unregulated markets produce some of the worst abuses possible. Libertarians should consider that currently one of the least regulated markets (for manufacturing, not political) in the world is China - the US used to be like that, so why did it change? Some examples:
No environmental regulations. Companies/people should be free to pollute as they wish. Example: factories in China have practically no restrictions chemical dumping. Result: drinking water gets polluted and people die.
No trademark regulations, no intellectual property (or not enforced). Result: pirated goods are everywhere, consumers can't tell the difference between legit goods and pirated.
No safety regulations. Equivalent of FDA is corrupt or useless. Result: pirated drugs are everywhere. Nobody can tell the difference. Thousands of people have died. Lead paint in baby toys.
No restrictions on manufacturing or owning weapons. No ATF. Result: Rich people (like Osama bin Laden) could legitimately buy any biological or nuclear weapon.
No government restrictions on publishing. Absolutely no censorship. Result: child pornography becomes legalised.
No government interference in financial markets. Result: Enron. Inability to government finance short-term problems eg. post 9/11 bankruptcy of all airlines.
No restrictions on monopolies. Result: large companies dominate and destroy all competition. You buy gasoline from Standard Oil. Your software is from Microsoft. Your phone service is provided by Ma Bell. Since competitors are crushed or absorbed before becoming established in the marketplace, you will never have any other choice.
No restrictions on drugs. Result: drugs become as common as sweeties. In fact, some manufacturers start adding morphine, heroin, etc. to sweets. Coca-cola reverts back to cocaine.
Those are just my thoughts. You might also like to read What's wrong with libertarianism.
You can play by whatever rules you want here. Sure, you may not be compliant with everyone and you're going to have to play ball and use the same protocols for various things, but there's no law about it.
Put a webserver up and there's no police force you can run to to report a hacking. Self-reliance on the net is extremely important in order to stay safe.
Any departure from that implies governance and policing and a lot of other scary very unlibertarian things on the internet which I get uncomfortable thinking about.
Things like how people respond to virus outbreaks bother me. I blame the vulnerability more than the exploitation of it. I don't expect the internet to be a safe place so I look out for my own safety and if I were to ever get infected with something I'd count it as my own fault or the fault of the software I installed. I hope the internet is always a dangerous but free wilderness and never becomes the safe suburbia so many people seem to want from it.
Direct away from face when opening.
I'm a nerd and a libertarian, so I've thought about this one a lot:
1) Libertarianism appeals to people who feel confident to take on the world as an individual and have a creative urge. A more mundane persons would rather be part of the group and doesn't feel stifled by lots of rules and convention. Nerds are more competent that the average person, at least in their chosen profession, so they prefer a world with less rules even if it means foregoing government safety nets.
2) Computer nerds, at least, are used to looking for bugs in systems. They are adept at seeing the bugs in the huge system that is our government.
3) Again, computer nerds, at least, understand that because of computational and data-gathering limitations, centralized decision making has limitations. We understand the power of networks and distributed computation, and see how that paradigm applies to the worlds of economic and social interaction.
Having said all that, seems to me there are more liberal nerds than libertarian nerds (the two are really branches of the same philosophy. What's very rare are conservative nerds.
No statistically valid citation, no facts, just bullshit. Typical leftist.
You don't understand because you have a deliberate blind spot. The blind spot was built into your political definitions over 70 years ago. It is a problem of definition.
You said "As a leftist, I know there are many people who share my ideological views but have very little in common with me in terms of profession and non-work interests. Is the community's political bent directly tied to our higher than average economic success?"
First you should realize that many people will share ANY ideological view. It's a large world out there. On any question, there are going to be differing views. There will always be divergent voices. If you listen to those who agree with you, you will find there are many who share them. Doesn't matter what those views of yours are. At the same time, there will be many who disagree with you. That is not logic or sense, it's just statistics.
Second, your inability to understand Libertarians is based on your use of definitions. You appear to want to see politics in terms of Left and Right. The terms are derived from the Italian Parliament in the early 1930's. The Communists sat on the left. The Fascists sat on the right. This really forms the basis of your political world view.
The Communists were the international socialists. This means that they believed 1. That the Government should control the economy by running all economic enterprises though direct management. 2. That government use of force to achieve their ends was both necessary and justified. 3. That any one who disagreed with them was wrong and should be suppressed. and 4. That the system should support an international system of dominance or control.
The Fascists were the National Socialists. This means that they believed 1. That the Government should control the economy by running all economic enterprises through indirect management. 2. That government use of force to achieve their ends was both necessary and justified. 3. That any one who disagreed with them was wrong and should be suppressed. and 4. That the system should support a national system of dominance or control.
In the Center were those who agreed with some of each wing.
Since that time, Fascist has become a bad name. They won initially in Italy, Germany and Spain, then launched and lost a war. Nobody likes a looser. Communists and their friends in the center now call anybody they don't like a Fascist. Actually, only a socialist can be a Fascist. Anyone else is really something else, but political labeling has never been about honesty.
Your problem with the Libertarians is that they are not even on your political definition spectrum, which includes only socialists. Libertarians want 1. Freedom from government control, to the greatest extent necessary. 2. Freedom from economic coercion to the greatest extent necessary.
This can also be likened to the Philosophers you chose to follow. Socialists seek to follow in one way or another the philosophies of Plato (the Republic) or Moore (Utopia). Libertarians seek to follow those of Thomas Jefferson (The Declaration of Independence)and Henry David Thoreau (Essay on Civil Disobedience). The economics for each are expressed by Karl Marx Das Kapital) and Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations). However, you should understand that the economics are not the basis of the philosophy, but merely an expression of it.
As a political party, Libertarians are in the minority. They are a vocal and thoughtful group who will probably never have a great deal of direct power, but are influencing both the Left and Right on your political spectrum as those official groups continue to try and find some way of distracting from the obvious failures of their peculiar socialist policies.
I should state here that not all socialist policies are failures, Merely that the majority of ALL economic actions are failures. A libertarian system allows them to fail and be done with. A socialist system supports them for years. Not deliberate, only a natural result of inefficiencies of scale. Libertarians support localized control. Socialists support centralized control. Both have advantages, both have disadvantages.
Think about this. You won't be 'converted', but you may come to understand.
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.
Libertarianism speaks to our common selfishness while making for good sound bytes. And it's far enough out of the realm of political possibility that it allows you to make bold and sweeping suggestions with no fear of the actual consequences. "All drugs should be legalized" - yeah, because what this country needs is Philip Morris marketing heroin to twelve-year-olds (and pretending to market it to eighteen-year-olds). "Get rid of federally-funded schools and give us vouchers" - great, so middle- and upper-class kids go to private schools and the poor kids whose parents don't care about education never even learn to read. I'm sure a huge, illiterate underclass wouldn't have any negative effects on our society, economy, etc. "Get rid of tariffs and let free trade rule the market" - but don't let too many Indians get tech jobs, or you'll hear the whining again here on Slashdot!
In the US, Healthcare is mostly private. Didn't you watch Sicko?
And in the US, there is no mass transit.
Our highly subsidized auto/road system is a poor substitute for a real mass transit system.
The trend is that the spread of pavement outpaces the spread of population.
You complain that the roads are too slow and need to be wider.
So they widen the roads.
People along the way, drowning is noise from the new traffic, move out of town, passed you.
This creates more traffic.
Since our road system is subsidized so heavily, roads are "free". This means people can have an hour commute to work every day rather cheaply (other than time). For this reason our road system is very inefficient.
The US is growing into one giant strip mall or parking lot, that will resemble LA.
No, Libertarians are not leftists.
I don't believe a pure form of any existing government works.
A certain mix of Libertarianism and Socialism would work well.
For a transportation system. A subsidized train system would be most efficient.
Imagine if we put one tenth of the auto/road money into a train system.
Oddly, the poll results seem odd when most of the outspoken opinions lean more liberal than libertarian within the Slashdot community in my opinion.
"Bernard of Chartres used to say that we are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size." John of Salisbury, 1159.
It seems very natural for me to be a programmer, working with open source technologies, and a libertarian. How can I scream "show me the source" all day, taking responsibility for my own learning and contribution to the code (and subsequent fallout if it occurs) and then come home and then ask politicians to take care of me and tell me what to think? Both Republicans and Democrats do tell you what to think, Libertarians don't. It's this axis, the one concerned with who has the ability and power to make decisions, that Libertarians are interested in. Also, far from being communist-leaning as it is always accused of, the concept of open source is very democratic, encouraging people to share but also take control to accomplish create what they need. Free software is even more so, adding the concept of enforced liberty. When I program I'm just practicing the same liberty and personal responsibility that make up my personal politics.
So Mod Parent Down, Mod Grand Parent Up.
I don't agree with everything that the Grandparent said, however he was well spoken and backed up his statements with evidence (however anecdotal).
$diff terrorists hippies
$
$rm -rf *terrorists *hippies
Nerds are libertarians* because we are rational, analytical beings, and rational analytical beings who analyze the state of human affairs tend to lean towards libertarianism* (esp. if much of that analysis is also spent in economics; now *that* is a category of people who are libertarian*). I firmly believe that if someone carefully thought things through and carefully considered all the facets and angles like a good engineer, they will come to a libertarian* conclusion.
Other reasons:
1) Because we stand out from the mainstream, and a libertarian* ideal best suits the outcasts.
2) Because cyberspace is itself very libertarian.
* Libertarian is a very broad term. Much like liberal or conservative, and is a term with little meaning unless qualified. So I shall qualify what I mean by libertarian: People who believe in the principle that individual liberty in all areas--including, but not limited to, personal behavior and economic behavior--should be respected as long the liberties of others are not violated and that any action that involve others are mutually consenting. Do I think that Randian objectivism fits that description? No, because while it puts a lot of emphasis on each person's liberties, it allows very little room aside from "please have the self control to not do bad" to control for the protection of liberties and the whole mutual consent thing. Is total government non-intervention libertarian? No, for the same reason I just cited. Is robber-baron capitalism libertarian? No, for the same reason I just cited. Is socialism libertarian? No, because it places too much emphasis on protecting positive rights in a way that needlessly infringes on others' rights.
Second, there's a greater trend in the geek population away from the sort of religious belief. Few geeks have the religious motivation to be against abortion and gay marriage, the two social rallying flags of social conservatives today in America.
So, that pretty much only leaves the economic axis to worry about to differentiate the remaining geek populace into either liberals or libertarians. This is why this Slashdot poll did not surprise me in the least. While there was no populist/authoritarian option, conservative was the least picked choice of the mainstream political beliefs, and liberal and libertarian were the top two.
So, then the question fundamentally comes down to, "What do you fear the most?"
- An inefficient government running roughshod over you (taxation, interference in property rights, tyranny of the majority, etc).
- Powerful, unaccountable private entities running roughshod over you (monopolies, externalities, inequity of power, etc).
Of course, this is a bit of an oversimplification (as is the notion that most people fit into these little political boxes), but it mostly suffices. I find that most libertarian and most liberal points of view come down to concerns that their favorite bogeyman will ruin everything if left unchecked and powerless. More nuanced views come from realizing that they both are pretty bad and that you have to make a choice how to balance them (even if you tend to throw the balance almost entirely one way or the other). The crazy ideologues you see here on Slashdot and elsewhere are the people who seem to never acknowledge that the other side's feared enemy is a problem too.If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Nerds are unrealistic when it comes to how human beings actually work. They seem to have some vision of people that is way closer to ideal than actually exists. What's more, most nerds I talk to recognize this even in themselves, yet persist in the delusion.
You can't take the sky from me...
Nerds tend to be intelligent and objectively analytical.
That means we realize that the socialism espoused by the left simply never works. It will work with ants and bees, but not humans.
That means we realize that the prosecution of consensual (made-up) crimes like drugs, sodomy and prostitution will never succeed except in an oppressive totalitarian state, and the damage of prosecution will be overall worse than the crime itself.
Because they need to move out of their mother's basement and get a girlfriend?
Perhaps nerds just have a better than average understanding of economics.
I dislike allot of the cruft that has come to pass over time. I think it would be good to start with basic rights, as outlined in the plane speaking portion of the constitution, the Bill of Rights. I would like to see less money and power centralized, as that leads to many problems and corruption. As I see it. With most of the power at a lower level, such as the state level, we have a much better chance of holding people accountable. I'm not for getting rid of the FDA, or anything like that.
I'm also a bit amazed by the people allowing their reps to spend their social security retirement account money, without raising a single objection, that has led to any action. And after allowing that they still expect to be paid. One generation should not be allow to place a huge burden on the next, or sell them into virtual slavery by way of taxing them to repay national debt. Any generation should be trying to leave something more to the next. Something other that a huge bills.
I'm met liberals, that they talk of liberation. I've met conservatives, but never heard them speak of conservation.
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
Fuck libertarian, I;m centrist! :D
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
Libertarianism is more than anything a sentiment of wanting to cast off the hawsers. People who believe that there is territory left to explore will sooner or later find themselves unable to pull the old familiar world off with them, and so it is only natural to start hacking at the fetters.
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
When I say "logical" I mean a system that logically flows from a few core ideas, as opposed to a system that is just a grab-bag of unrelated points-of-views?
For example the right want's freedom of expression unless it's porn, or burning the flag. The left wants freedom of expression unless it's hate speech. Libertarians want freedom of expression - period.
Consider the disconntected values of the right: religion in government, pro-active military, less tax burden for investors, strongly anti-drug, pro capital punishment, anti-abortion, anti strong gun control. These idea do not steem from any central belief system.
The same is true of the left: environmentalism, government assistance to poor, government assistance to minorities (regardless of income level), passivism, againt capital punishment, pro-abortion, pro gun control. These are just a grab-bag of unrealted values.
Libertarians beliefs tend to absolute, maybe too absolute. But it all fits together in a logically structured manner. Some of the core beliefs are "your rights end where mine begin" and "it is not the responsibility of the government to re-distribute wealth." The ideas do make some sense, and the entire value system ties together. Because of the this libertain ideas can be debated with logic and structure. Not just: I believe this, or I believe that.
Maybe the logical structure of the libertain system appeals to the the technically inclined.
Many nerds have trouble with social interactions. There is some respected psychological evidence that autism (which is characterized by an impaired ability in social situations) is just an extreme form of being a nerd: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Baron-Cohen.
If you're a smart nerd, it is easy to come to believe that you can do all sorts of fantastic things without relying on others. Nerds tend to do things like work on computers where a lot can be achieved without leaving the room. If you ask a person like this to pick a political philosophy, it's not unlikely that they'll pick the one that focuses most on leaving people alone to do what they do best.
So I would wager that if you gave all of your nerd friends a personality test, the most strongly libertarian would be the ones lowest on the extraversion and agreeableness measures.
Of course none of this has anything to do with how true libertarianism is or how smart nerds are about political matters. If anything, I imagine they grossly underestimate the importance of social interactions. In other words, I think nerds should have free reign over technology, but that perhaps the engineers shouldn't dictate policy.
Well, before I say anything, I'd like to just state where I'm coming from on this. I have two university degrees (both BAs), I'm a published author and a professional writer, and both of my published books so far have been regarding computer games (one was a novella that started the Blizzard fiction line, the other was a reference book on the Everquest phenomenon). I'm 30 years old, single, and politically I'm what you would call a "South Park Conservative." I'm also a Monarchist, but that doesn't show up that often. I'm a member of the Copyright Alliance (which is an educational group rather than an advocacy group - my condition for joining and offering my help was that it represents the law, not whatever corporation is trying to bend it into a pretzel at the time, and so far I have not been disappointed), and I'm trying to start my own non-fiction publisher in the next couple of months.
Ten years ago, I was much more left of centre than I am now. And, the longer I live, the more I'm coming to realize that the old joke "the difference between somebody on the left and somebody on the right is twenty years" is actually quite true. Fifteen years ago, almost all of the games on my computer were pirated. I knew it was wrong, but I didn't really care - I was getting away with it, so it was free swag. Twenty years ago, both of my parents were running fairly successful businesses - my father was the head of a computer consulting company, and my mother was the head of an educational publisher. So I grew up in the upper middle class. That doesn't mean I lived a life of luxury - the recession in the '90s hit us really hard, and even before then, my father brought me up to earn my way through life, rather than spoiling me. I should also add that as a Canadian, my high school experience was not the sort of hell described in Voices from the Hellmouth. There was relatively little indocrination, as I remember it, and individuality was encouraged by the teachers.
So, in the here and now, I'm a copyright advocate and author about to turn businessman. Ten years ago, I was an idealistic university student learning about history and pretty left of centre. So what changed, and why have I told everybody this?
As far as the general question of "nerds" and liberatianism goes, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that most of the "nerds" I know never really left a university mindset. It's not a matter of intelligence - it's a matter of being informed about what is going on, keeping up to date with the social issues involving their rights, and believing that they can fight it out. In a way, they haven't seemed to have made a lot of the mental compromises that the "twenty years" in the joke would have forced on them. And, as somebody who has lost some of that innocence, I envy them a great deal.
But, I think there are also some trends that need to be recognized. Some people would call themselves libertarians who actually aren't. There are a lot of people who have turned intellectual property piracy into an ideology, more out of a sense of entitlement than anything else. And, I've noticed that a lot of these people tend to be on the young side (in their teens or twenties). I think part of that might be that they just haven't had enough time to really have a stake in something yet, and that does give you perspective that you wouldn't have otherwise (or, I could be completely wrong and it's sociopathy, or ignorance, or idiocy, or something else - you never know, and everybody is different).
There are a lot of "nerds" working in computer sciences that have a different issue that I've noticed, and that is that they assume too much. Some of them have turned Open Source into an ideology and can't quite understand why others just care about what works better. A lot of them forget that a lot of people see a computer as a tool that lets them do their email (in short, a sort of electronic hammer), and don't go any farther than that in their understanding - and then attribute why worms and email
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
"Why Are So Many _American_ Nerds Libertarians?"
You'll find the situation a little different in Europe.
After a point of wisdom one sees that there is no exact colors of white and black, but balance must always be preserved. Therefore you got your nerds going libertarian. Why ? they are more intelligent people, and apt at learning too.
Read radical news here
Libertarianism is a very simple philosophy. A couple of axioms you reason from, and the whole thing just falls right out.
That's its strength, and it's weakness.
An example: the limited liability corporation has no place in a Libertarian society, because the government has no business transferring risk and liability from one person to another, any more than it does taxing people.
Simple.
The problem is that the world is not apparently all that interested in these kinds of simple axiomatic systems, as shown by the incredible complexity of dealing with issues like the environment, mental illness or the status of children in a libertarian society.
Not to say that these things cannot be resolved, but the further you get away from Person As Atom and into the complex biology of society, the harder it gets.
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
We're libertarians because we're surrounded by fascists. Ask any 20 yr old who has been systematically denied federal student loans because they were arrested for possession of cigarette rolling papers or a plexiglass tube. Ask any 30 year old who can't get health care for their two year old infant because their company demands $500 a month for 'coverage of dependents' on a $11 hr salary. Ask any forty year old who was thrown out of the military or good job that they did well because they were a sexual minority (or wouldn't fuck the boss or commanding officer). Ask any fifty year old who was raped by a football player, forced to bear an unwanted child 'out-of-wedlock', and had the child taken out of her arms at birth to never be seen again. Ask any sixty year old who was beaten half to death in the back of the police station for drinking from a white-only water fountain, or just 'having a bad attitude'. Ask any seventy year old who couldn't get into a good school because they were Jewish, or Asian, or Mexican, or Indian, or even one/tenth of anything.
Just talk to anybody and you'll soon know why we're libertarians. Because the libertarians are the only people who consistently, uncompromising, and publicly affirm that having all this kind of vicious bullshit written into the legal code is cruel, stupid, and wrong.
Really, the only question you should ask yourself is 'Why aren't I a libertarian?'
We're smarter than you. :)
:D
My question is, why are any nerds leftists? I guess traditionally the leftist nerds I run into are graphics designers rather than engineers, so I suppose I can see why they stick to emotional arguments instead of logic.
And it's not that I don't like what they do, it's that I don't like what they do to me.
Why should I be forced to act a certain way just because they decided to make me inhale poison?
You can't take the sky from me...
Why do you seem to assume economic success a prerequisite of being Libertarian?
I'd say the reverse is true; to be a lefist, you need to have a defeatist attitude - limited desire to achieve anything, and no faith in your fellow man to ever do the right thing. As a result, you think the One True Way (TM) is to force your neighbor to pay for programs that make you feel better.
Cynical Diogenes a person always searching for virtue in self and other persons (even politicians). Yes, Diogenes the cynic was considered a virtuous person. Diogenes was a dirty, scruffy, unkempt vagabond of ancient Greek roads. Also, the lamp/light at night thing is simply modern allegory, Diogenes would not of been able to afford a lamp and oil to light the night, he would have waited for daylight (I think). Diogenes was a sort of traveling philosopher evangelist preaching that human virtue is not wealth, oppression, megalomania ....
... citizens are "Cynics", but not "modern cynics". ... other citizens. ..., ..., ...) wanting us to murder/oppress others, molest our children, subjugate our mothers, pay money for big-wonderful worthless buildings, good living standards .... ....
...) who could never be, and never want to be Cynics. ... have no virtue, seek no virtue, and expect no virtue in themselves or anyone; Therefor, they could never be Cynics.
....
... reality is a ....
... had to be Cynics.
Now many hundreds of years later the word "Cynicism" (as spun by our cultures/history) is used to define folks who maintain that self-interest/greed/... are the motives for all human behavior. The "modern cynic" [AKA: anti-Cynic] call all altruistic human virtues, actions, and behavior insincere flattery, lies, bullshit, flimflam, and/or the actions of fools.
Most US, EU
Most folks are not cynical (modern use) towards family, friends
Most folks are Cynical (archaic use) towards:
(1) all CEO/CFO corporatist after the recent/next thefts of retirements, corruption of politicians
(2) all politicians after being hoodwinked into a war for profiteers, discovering that a third of our infrastructure is about to collapse
(3) all religious clergy (Wicca to Islam
Many Citizens are being called Cynics by "white-collar-trash" (corporatist, plutocrats
IOW: Most (not all) Politicians, clergy
Good People and Citizens are Cynics in spirit (moral code) and as a Cynic you must always search for virtue in self and other persons.
The Democrats, Republicans, Independents, bishops/clergy..., CEO/CFO... have all (OK, most) failed to be virtuous or have redeemable value to the Citizens they are supposed to respect, honor, serve, protect
Geeks, phreaks, nurds, moms and dads around the world are looking for honest, and far better representation for "The People".
In the USA, god and libertarians are part of the spectrum being looked at by many good citizens to avoid (1) economic meltdown, (2) WWIII, (3) decreased living standards, (4)
IT IS GOOD AND HONORABLE TO BE A CYNIC! I wish (by law) all plutocrats, politicians, clergy
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
The Internet is an empowering force for an individual. Sitting alone, I can learn about almost any subject on the planet. I am constantly asked to use my own individual judgment to filter information. Any wonder that we believe in the power of the individual to take care of himself? This is supported by our real-world status. Internet users are overwhelmingly middle and upper class income earners. The vast majority have at least one college degree, and many have more than one. In other words, the majority of us have learned to think for ourselves about complex subjects, and have reaped economic benefits from that ability. Any wonder that we believe in the power of the individual to take care of himself? Ironically, the Internet is also a powerful force for communal products. Because digital copying has almost no cost, the law of supply and demand is seriously altered for information. In fact, the best model for many kinds of information is a very socialist one - Open Source. But still we are not interacting as a GROUP, it is always just a collection of individuals. Some of the great benefits of the internet may be because of a group, socialist-style model... but the experience is entirely individual. OF COURSE we believe in the power of the individual.
**** You never REALLY learn to swear until you own a computer. ****
...combined with the "use what is known to work" philosophy.
(as opposed to what one WISHES would work)
Mostly right, but I think a good deal of the reason for these things is that tech work attracts a certain slightly autistic type that exhibits these characteristics. Also, most young, middle-class Americans have had very easy lives, which allows them to form and maintain the illusion that what they have is due to their own merit--forgetting that billions of people labored for thousands of years to build what they take for granted at birth, and that billions must work together to maintain it.
Everyone but you is telepathic.
And so I skipped ahead about 50 pages:
Then another 50...
Then another 50...
And so on. I'm pretty sure I got a good idea of the point of the book without having to subject myself to more than 40 random paragraphs or so. Everyone I've ever met that says they idolize Ayn Rand turns out to be a self-involved, spoiled whore.
God I hate her. But truly, do I hate her more than I hate myself? It was a muggy, shitty Sunday in St Petersburg, FL, and he began to question whether he was just posting to slashdot in a vain attempt to eke a teensy bit of self-recognition out of the Internet once again, or did he really believe that posting some inane bullshit about Ayn Rand was truly noteworthy?
He got up from his mother's computer;smelled the stale milk from the bottom of his empty coffee cup. God, he had to take a shit. And he bets it's going to be smelly, because God is spiteful like that....
Please stop stalking me, bro.
It wasn't so much that Newton was selfish as that he was an insufferable prick. He was not a nice guy. A genius yes, but mean and vindictive.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Ask Jean-Frederic - he's an excellent psychotherapist who can help any geek to understand his libertarian leanings, and many other aspects of the mind - beautiful or not. I speculate libertarianism may be connected to a logical rebellion (rather than emotional) against maternal dominance early in life, but I guess it's different for everyone. It might be connected to a problem with emotional communication - that's the case for me anyhow. It's also hard to feel a general connectedness with non-geeks - and the geek world does give us huge liberty. Just my 2c.
Zen tips: Pay attention. Don't take it personally. Believe nothing.
Why Are So Many Nerds Librarians ? I was very confused then I realized what it said.
Nerds are people who are very capable in their nerd-field, which for nerds tends to be several things that all foster personal independence. Thus, the most intuitively appealing political ideology is one that grants them the most freedom/least regulation.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
"Just so long as these new-fangled Libertarian's don't bitch and moan (or shoot up their school/workplace) when someone "does on to them" first."
This is the most common and insidious misunderstanding of what Libertarianism is.
The idea is not that society should become a free-for-all with people stabbing each other in the back simply because there is no law against it. Allow me to share a story about the U.S. military that will perfectly illustrate why I'm a libertarian.
I attended one of the U.S. Service academies. These places only accept the "best and brightest," not just academically, but really outstanding candidates who were tops in high school classes as well as being varsity athletes, community volunteers, etc. You'd be hard pressed to find a more self-motivated and responsible group of people in one place.
Over the four years I was there, I witnessed as a ridiculously strict set of rules and rigid enforcement of the letter-of-the-law turned this outstanding group of people into a bunch of cynical, irresponsible, lazy, backstabbing children. Admittedly, part of that is probably the due to nature of college-age people, but this went far beyond that.
I can honestly say that the only people who graduated better off than they were in high school (other than having the academic experience) were those who rejected the entire system and played by the rules just enough to not get into trouble, and relied on their own sense of right and wrong to get by.
Maybe that's the whole point of the place. If it is, it's not by design.
But anyway, the lesson I learned is that no system of rules and laws is capable of positively shaping a culture. In fact, from what I observed, very strict rules were like crack for unthinking people who would never develop their own moral code. It's much easier to act legally than it is to act ethically, because ethical action requires a lot of thought and reflection.
But for a system to work over the long term, people have to act ethically. John Adams said, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
I think a strict set of laws fosters irresponsibility. It's counter-productive.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
I am certainly not a libertarian. I don't know why so many nerds are. I suspect it's because, as a group, nerds are not the most empathic or socially intelligent people.
It might have to do with their own economic success, isolating them from the real problems that many real people face. But it might also run deeper than that. It is my impression that many nerds come from higher than average economical backgrounds, and as such it is not only their own economic success, but also that of their parents that is isolating them from real peoples real problems.
If you have never been poor yourself, always have been given things and opportunities and knowledge and self-esteem etc., maybe you don't understand why poor people don't just pull their act together and become rich themselves.
What sort of gun control might you favor? Not trying to turn this into a slugfest and I'm not terribly zealous about the deal, I'm just wondering what sort of "gun control" would be embraced by someone who claims Libertarianism as his party. You do realize, don't you, the only thing really sustaining any balance at all in this country is the fact the poor people have guns, the rich people have guns, the religious people have guns... at a fundamental level the government has no choice but to fear the people - exactly the recipe for liberty as envisioned by our patriots.
By the way...
A libertarian is going to see that the Constitution provides for a separation of Church and State, and therefore a government entity (public schools) should not be teaching faith in a specific Christian ideology. Followers of Creationism are free to continue to believe what they want, are free to gather outside of schools.
Actually, dude, what you are espousing here is NOT a Libertarian stance on the issue but a Federalist one. The Constitution does NOT make any claims upon our education system - the NEA does that with Washington's political help. Ron Paul, for example, has made the NEA one of his higher priority targets in his speeches and appearances. And the Constitution makes clear that states are, to the extent not claimed under Federal rule, free to RULE THEMSELVES. Outside the present influence of money, there is nothing preventing states from, if the people of that state so choose, allowing prayer in school or theology classes or anything else of the sort.
First... Um... what makes you assume that encouraging creativity should be the main or sole purpose of politics?
Second, uh, free/open source software development is a group project, and it's one of the most successful scalable ways of developing large systems.
Third, since when are geek pursuits (software, engineering, fandom) the only or particularly creative ones - compared, to, say, artistic endeavors like music, painting, architecture, fashion, graphic design, poetry? These things tend to be done by artsy types, who aren't exactly famed for right wing or libertarian political stances.
Fourth, creative activity is similar to technical and scientific innovation in that it is based on the works of others. In many (probably most) cases is not, in fact, done alone - the myth of the "romantic author" who creates something from nothing notwithstanding. Creative people thrive in environments with other creative people. This has been widely documented - for blues musicians, playwrights in Shakespeare's London, Renaissance Florentine painters. Even the success of Silicon Valley over Route 128 has been attributed to social connections and cooperation.
Just to clarify: I'm not disagreeing that geeks are creative, and I believe that creativity is politically important. But your assertion just doesn't hold water.
Your left/right anecdote is not quite true. In Denmark, we had parties called Left and Right (in Danish, of course) for a lot longer than the 1930s. Of course, nowadays we have more than two parties (unlike the americans, for all practical purposes).
Can you name one successful big government program ? The only one I can think of is the Manhattan Project. Common big government poster projects are the federal highway system, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Moon landing, Social Security. Arguably, all of those were either expensive boondoggles or outright failures or had negative side effects beyond their utility. Even if you like some of those and don't blame the Army Corps and Big Government corruption for the New Orleans disaster as this week's Time Magazine does...
How about Linden Johnson's war on poverty or his public housing system ? How many more people were poor after the program than before ? If like me, you can't think of many big government successes, you might be a Libertarian.
If you think the war on drugs is a war on Americans and an abuse of power, you might be a Libertarian.
If you think "That government which governs least governs best", you are a Libertarian.
You either empower the individual or the institution, be it government or non-government institution. Governments are the worst forms monopolies and, in history, are the most destructive institutions. This is not true when the government has been a republic, like the constitution of the US calls for. A Reupublic makes the citizen the sovereign entity, and so leads to the empowering of the individual. I'm a libertarian because I see the sick abuses of both large corporations and governments as being caused, ultimately, by the same thing: institutions with too much power.
I think you hit the nail on the head. I'd just like to add, one purpose that American libertarians can have here in the US is to influence the two parties...
Democrats can be better about their obsession with setting up lots of programs, and the Democrat tradition of always including a way to pay for their program with the proposal. Which eventually leads to taxation once people run out of way to fund their pet projects. Democrats can also learn to be less involved in international affairs and less quick to fight wars, which they seem to be better at hiding (like Kosovo). For example, the Vietnam war was created and fought by Democrat President and Congress, and lost by a Republican President. Not hugely appreciated are military-like action on American soil against citizens of this nation, like David Koresh and the Branch Davidians. But I think Republicans would have likely reacted the same way, but for completely different (and equally unjust) reasons.
Republicans can be better about their obsession with rigid social norms used as a class system. Which they often use to beat down the undesirable classes of people and provide an unfair advantage to those in the right class. Basically they can learn to be socially liberal, and care less about what other people do and focus more on what they themselves are doing. Also a recent bit that has popped up due to neocons is Republicans spending far more money than they used to. The only thing less fiscally sound than increasing taxes is borrowing the money. At least taxation can be corrected and tends to mainly have short term consequences, a budget imbalance that continues on for decades is a cancer in the nation.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
You can't take the sky from me...
You can't take the sky from me...
I did read the manual. It's called the US Constitution. Libertarians are the only one's who follow and actually VALUE the Constitution. Dems and Reps claim to value it but really see it as an obstruction to their other agenda. The Constitution is a truly brilliant document and most Americans don't really understand the the values it is based on. Those ideas even today are fairly unique and it's hard to find a society that truly believes in liberty.
So if your an coder or analyst and understand the value of sticking to a spec.. You might understand why following the Constitution is so important. Pushing it aside for a current popular view is called bad design. I wish more people in Washington would read Mythical Man Month.
WTF did you expect from a MILITARY academy???
Self awareness - try it!
The best form of government would be no government, but the human race may never be sufficiently developed in the area of self-governance to achieve that. Unfortunately human nature tends to work against the even flow of society and thus society seeks to create a government to act as its punisher and then human nature again seeks power for its new creation and thus the ones who truely need punished take over the jobs as the punishers, all the while believing they are right and justified in their actions of modifying society to fit their views. Because self-governance has failed to become widely achieveable, anarchy has been infamously mis-defined as the worst form of government when it would be the best form of government if not for human nature as it now stands. Unfortunately, such self-governance appears to sit beside the perpetual motion machine in the achievability rankings. For it to work it would have to work for everyone and even if one believes they can achieve it, they know of someone they doubt could ever achieve such self-control.
I think it is quite interesting, how the discussion here differs from what I normally experience in Germany.
What you call "libertarian" would rather be a liberal here. What you call "liberal" sounds like our morerate left.
As I sit here, we have 541 comments posted, and I'd say at least 500 are from people who are simply enjoying hearing themselves talk, or "verbal masturbation" as a friend of mine would put it.
I'd say most of those comments can be summed up by one sentence: "We're libertarians because we're smarter than everybody else." Dozens of people are reaching into the depths of pop "psychology" to show how they're categorized as "thinkers" and "enlightened intellectuals" while ignoring how they are emotionally reaching for these labels because there are few things more pleasurable in life than feeling like you're better than everybody else.
The question asked was "Why are you all libertarians?" but the question being answered in spades here today is "Why doesn't anybody else ever vote Libertarian?" If anything, you're all taking the "We know what's best for everyone else, just sit back and let us take care of everything and everything will be so much better" approach that you yourselves decry from the major parties, but of course you're the ones who are saying it this time, so that makes it all better.
This isn't about policy solutions or ideology or anything of the sort. The answer to the question posed is that people in technical fields spend most of their workdays ego-tripping on telling the commoners to "RTFM N00B," translating their peculiar, specializied interest into a sense of superiority, and the "libertarianism" prevalent in the US today, with it's near-religious sense of gnosticism, naturally appeals to their own sense of self. "It's all so simple! Everybody else is just too stupid to see the answers! Why can't they all eat cake?"
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Why did you assume I am a libertarian?
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." - Bob Dylan
This is exactly the fallacy that most gun-rights advocates seem to be blind to.
See, America has this standing army that's got enough weapons to reduce pretty much the whole country to smoldering ash. Even without such scorched-earth tactics, I dare say they could pretty easily deal with a mob of civilians armed with their legally-owned handguns. All it takes is one tank to sit in their way and fire into the crowd, and you'll see who's afraid of whose weapons.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Perhaps it is tied to economic success,but I think it's more than that. Look at our collective attitude towards spyware and adware. yes, we abhor these things because they are giant security issues, but we also abhor them out of a spirit of "Get the frell out of my system! My system! Mine! It's none of your business what I'm doing with it. Out!" Look at a platform like Linux. People who know enough about how it works at the kernel level can actually re-write the kernel to better suit their aims, much as a Libertarian is free to use the resources at his disposal, without fear of reprisal from an oversight body.
Anybody want my mod points?
The old joke is that the definition of a libertarian is republican who doesn't believe in God. I wish I know who came up with this first.
Thank God I'm an atheist!
You made a good post and some good points about what you think is true. You are wrong on all but one point. In reality, being intelligent doesn't mean you have no common sense. The two are not mutually exclusive in highly functioning successful or soon to be successful people. In fact, they can't be. You cannot get anywhere in life without common sense. You may make it past the first job interview, but after the first month on the job the manager will start trying to find a way to cut you loose.
There is nothing wrong with generalizing. There are patterns in all things. A pattern is made up of details. Details are made up structure. Structure is made, in nature, by the most stable configuration. Being broad scoped about a group of gazelle or people or plants or planets is possible because it's true. Don't be a wimp about it.
As has been said by other folks here, there are no economic ties for Libertarians. There are intellectual ties though. You cannot be an idiot and be a Libertarian. The two are mutually exclusive. You have to know your past and present to understand what our founders, like Thomas Jefferson, found out in personal experience and blood.
Economies that are open, where the fittest survive, cannot be destroyed. It is the most efficient and stable form of exchange. Economies that are founded on favoritism and giving to the poor or rich or people with blond hair, will fail. Economies that are stable are essential to the mystical and holy group that you call society. Societies have no rights. Societies have no privileges. Societies are not the foundation of the individual. Society is an effect to the cause of the individual. Communism, Nazism, Islamicism, Dictatorships, Democracies, etc. are all forms of society. The difference between all of these societies are defined by what Rights of the individual are validated and which are not. The Right to speech, representative government, and ownership of property are what separates all of the above.
Government is not society. Government is a method to mediate disputes between individuals, to print a common currency, and to uphold the Rights of the individual. Laws concerning government are made to grant them the privilege of acting on that behalf. Laws are made to contain governments, not enable them in all things but what is in law. To understand why this is, you can see the founding of the United States as a quick clue. And you can read the entire history of the human race for another clue. This is natural law. Governments must be vigilantly contained or it will no longer recognize you as the human that you are- but as an object that you aren't.
It is the Right of people to be poor, rich, crippled, healthy, living, dead, stupid, intelligent. It is not the privilege of government or your mythical "society" entity to make up for those discrepancies. That is also natural law. You cannot violate it without dire consequences(see social security/medicare/welfare). It is up to the individual to give what he can to help those less fortunate. That is the most efficient way of distributing wealth. Let people care for each other- because people will when given the chance. People are good. People can be trusted to do the right thing in general. People can give the poor 100% of the money that they wish to. Government can be trusted to give the poor half of the 100% you gave the government.
Libertarianism is literally a liberal understanding politically speaking. It is the opposite of the US political system at this point in history. A century ago, the liberals were the Republicans and the Democrats were the conservatives. They have since changed what they are through media. Conservatives are people that want the government to fulfill all their needs and desires(aka Federalism). Liberals want people to do as they will and keep government confined to the laws in the agreed upon Constitution(aka a Republic). In reality, today, the Republicans are the Liberals and the Democrats are the Conserv
Seriously, what the feck is a libertarian, and why should I care?
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Nerds are at heart practical. That means, that they may not pay attention to politics knowing that they themselves cannot have a realistic effect on the situation, so therefore why waste an undo amount of mental energy processing that data?
Over time more geeks/nerds have realized there are ways they can influence things, party through the power of the electronic medium. Then they have paid attention, and have started to have an effect.
If Libertarians are so obvlious then what about Ron Paul supporters? Or Porkbusters?
Also libretarians are not anarchists, at least not realistic ones - you need to study modern libertarianism a bit more.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I see a lot of Slashdoters, claim the Libertarian mantle or attack it, without a clear definition of what "Libertarianism" is. Many seem to think it is a mix of the two prominent American political parties (social liberals and economic conservatives). Others seem to think it's just about individualism and so they embrace it out of love for individual rights or condemn it a "social Darwinism." In reality, it is much more fundamental and philosophical.
Here is a basic definition:
Libertarianism is the belief that it is immoral to use force or the threat of force on other people if they are not using force on you.
The application of this results in conclusions such as:
Drugs may have negative effects on the user, but as long as someone can smoke pot without endangering others, it is wrong to initiate force on him by arresting or punishing him.
Poverty and social ills should be solved with voluntary compassion rather than threatening others with government force if they do not pay taxes.
People should be able to interact in the market place freely without using force to institute monopolies (regulating competitors out of the market, using the military to prop up the oil industry, or using the government to protect so called "intellectual property") and without using force to demand products and services.
More detailed definitions can be gathered from:
Wikipedia
Internet Radio
Books
Its because nerds are on the internet all the time and they want the internet to be free and unregulated. Plus the average nerd probably makes a decent income and doesnt want to get screwed over by too many taxes. They are also socially liberal.
...this talk of Libertarianism as a simplified, ideologically based political position, being attractive to "nerds" who are logical, gravitate toward principals, and have less understanding of "how people actually work" reminded me of this pithy little ditty: According to the author of "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" (wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_dad_poor_dad) he describes how the public schools (as has been said in other comments) is designed to train "good workers," but those who excel in business have a different kind of smarts that schools don't measure (an understanding of people and opportunity, perhaps?). So his prediction for where different grade-earners end up in the economy: "The A students end up working for the C students, and the B students end up working for the government." I see this applying in terms of the "logical, intelligent nerd who is good at systems" really excelling *as someone else's employee* (programmer, IT manager, etc.) but the boss is always that business person who isn't smart in the usual way, necessarily, yet has an understanding the nerds lack.
"if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate"
Libertarianism is about freedom from 2 insane US political parties. They both want total control over our lives, either by fascist religious views from the Republicans or fascist taxation by the communist/socialist Democrats.
I would say that this is because they are intelligent and well educated.
I know, that sounds like a crass statement. But I have reflected much on this question, and I believe it to be true. The more well-informed you are, the more you reject simplistic solutions. And many of the simplistic, well-intended but wrong "solutions" are on the social (not economic) right.
---
BDOS ERR ON A:>
Signature applied for, Patent Pending
There's something about being dangled from your feet with your head being flushed in a school toilet that makes them realise that...
Those with power often abuse those without power.
A number of geeks tend to be libertarian because they're young, undersocialised, come from a certain economic stratum. Other characteristics flow from there that point them in that direction - youth in western culture tend to be fiercely individualist, and mixed with being undersocialised, they don't tend to understand the fabric of society and think that it would maintain itself in a decent way without the state. Being undersocialised and often from the middle or upper-middle classes, they're led to have little interest in the welfare of others and feel no responsibility for them (social darwinism, or alternatively the naïve notion that everyone would be a winner without the state). Add in the math-y formulation of the philosophy/state and the cheap philosophy/value system that lets them join the "party of principle" (or alternatively identify with the movement but not the party and still be a bit nonconformist), and you have a lure that catch a number of geeks.
I was like this, a number of my friends when I was younger were like this as well. The years between have changed a few of us. A few prominent libertarian philosophers have found age to do the same - Robert Nozick, who wrote "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" (a libertarian favourite) later came to the perspective that his earlier works were lacking in an understanding/care for society, and attacked these views in some of his later works.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
I definitely agree that technology has vastly amplified an individuals power over many years ago, but there is an aspect to this that many ignore. You can try all you like to suppress the desires and actions of an individual in a society, but inevitably, especially if there is a forward progression of intelligence and strength, the bell curve dictates that there will be an individual powerful/lucky/intelligent enough to break down barriers and restraints that they feel are inherently and intrinsically unjust. When that person comes along, do you want them to be angered by the constant attempts to restrain them? When they finally figure out how to supercede the system, you would probably rather that they are benevolent to it and those who supported it (i.e. most people either through their lack of resistance to it or their actual perpetuation of it) than angry at the constant and eventually futile attempts to stop them.
I think that, to a large degree, this is the reason for the sudden popularity of the fantasy genre. It usually deals with a hero/heroin who is in some way different from their society. Usually events put them in a position to either exercise their power freely or use it reform a corrupt and inefficient society. I would imagine that many individuals frustrated by society and its constant and frankly pointless attempts to make everyone "safe" through suppression and conformity, would relate to or admire the modern fantasy hero.
Especially if you live in the United States, it comes down to this: the country was founded on a frontier spirit. The egalitarian spirit that all members of society are brothers and the lack of restrictions (obviously there are some deviations that im sure others will bring up such as slavery, but for the most part that is irrelevant to this point) on everyday activities bred an amazingly productive and powerful society. Attempting to decide what activities it is "acceptable" for a citizen of the United States to participate stands contrary to the very foundation of this country and is, in the end, quite useless.
There is always a way to get around restrictions, and the more powerful the restrictions, the longer it will take, but the more violent and destructive the final overthrow of said restrictions will be. Whatever man has made, no matter how wondrous, how powerful, can be undone by man. Suppression is not the answer, it will only hamper us in the present and destroy us in the future.
To some extent this is what makes Libertarianism so popular among nerds. Nerds (or perhaps a more flattering term?) are to a large degree far more talented at a certain aspect of society and human knowledge than the vast majority of the population (this sounds elitist but come on, its true) yet they are governed and regulated by people who understand far less about their expertise and this frustrates them. Not only that, many of them have the possibility of attaining great wealth (or at least living comfortably) yet they face the prospect of giving large portions of that future wealth to the same people who frustrate them through their pointless or misguided regulations. Im sure this applies to many more categories than just "nerds". As something of a "nerd" myself, I am familiar with the "nerd" predicament, but im sure every stereotype has similar feelings. It is time my friends that we stop thinking we know how to live other people's lives better than they do. Even seemingly uneducated and unintelligent people can have brilliant commonsense ideas, and it is not our responsibility (nor is it even permissable) to presume that we should regulate their lives or anyone elses for that matter) for their own good.
obviously enough.
it's the closest they'll ever get to being a jedi.
They're using their grammar skills there.
But not so strange as to make many of us librarians. Librarians? WTF? I, for one, do not know many nerd librarians.
I grew up in the U.S., briefly flirted with libertarianism as a teenager, and gradually moved left and became a Marxist, which I think provides a much better explanantion of today's world than the market fetishism of libertarianism and neoliberalism can.
As far as the connection between being a nerd and being a libertarian goes, I think that's mostly a U.S. phenomenon. Certainly before WWII, it was very common for engineers and scientists to be socialists and communists. With the Cold War that changed, and in the U.S. with the endless propaganda about freedom and markets, it's not surprising that libertariansm and the fetishization of markets should capture the imagination of aspiring technocrats.
I've met many scientists and engineers from places like India and Latin America who are very sympathetic to Marxism and socialist ideas. As far as I can see libertarianism as a meaningful political trend is mostly confined to the United States.
How can you have an honest and stimulating discussion about politics without offending someone?
Stick Men
These are the words of Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier in 1793 as he joined his local Revolutionary Committee:
e s/Fourier.html
"As the natural ideas of equality developed it was possible to conceive the sublime hope of establishing among us a free government exempt from kings and priests, and to free from this double yoke the long-usurped soil of Europe. I readily became enamoured of this cause, in my opinion the greatest and most beautiful which any nation has ever undertaken."
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographi
Everybody who calls them self a libertarian must read Michel Houellebecq. The Elementary Particles was brilliant and very on topic in this tread.
As for nerds being more economically successful, isn't that just because nerds are miserly SOB's who use 10 year old Pentium IIIs and free open source software? ;-)
You can always break libertarians into two camps because there really is no "true" libertarianism. The most erudite libertarians are libertarian conservatives and libertarian liberals, but they are at heart conservatives or liberals.
The reason is that the only complete ideologies in Western thought are liberalism and conservativism, and they stem from a dialog over very fundamental disagreements. Libertarianism has never really been a mainstream part of that dialog. They even intuitively recognize the need for a dialog and so invented authoritarianism, but that's obviously a farce because behavior isn't the same as ideology.
Most libertarians are one-issue ideologues, often anti-drug types or small-government types. These aren't necessarily invalid points of view, but they usually don't have a coherent answer to "big picture" questions and are the main reason it's so hard to get elected running as a libertarian despite their numbers.
Ron Paul, but he has little chance of getting in. The core neo-con do not want him, even though he matches closer to the professed ideals of the republican party.
Al Gore. I think that he has shown intelligence in just about everything that he has done. Some things have been perverted by the wing-nuts, but oh well.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Officer Barbrady: Yes, at first, I was happy to be learning how to read. It seemed exciting and magical. But then I read this - Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. I read every last word of this garbage and because of this piece of shit, I'm never reading again!
The nerd stereotype consists of people with high intelligence and low social skills.
Libertarianism is an ideology where you can logically deduce the correct standpoint from a few axioms (pleasing the intelligence of the nerd), and the most basic axioms is the importance of the individual over any kind of social structure (making the low social skills seem unimportant).
I personally find Libertarianism the easiest point of view to argue from (for the reasons mentioned above), but as I grow older I increasingly find the axioms at odds with the world I observe. Social structures are important, even for nerds, so I lean more and more towards socialism and conservatism, both of whom are build upon the importance of social institutions (just different institutions, the state vs. family + church + nation).
See, this is the fallacy that gun control advocates like to trot out. Unfortunately it ignores all reality.
Who is America's army? Children of wealthy people rarely volunteer. We do not have an army made up of wealthy officers and merchant class youths hoping to drag their family's class up a bit. There are a lot of middle class kids in the army, and a lot of kids that came from poverty stricken homes.
You'd really have to be a fool to believe those kids are going to turn those weapons against their own neighborhoods, families and homes when their "boss" is the one doing the oppressing. This is how civil wars begin.
Well, Libertarians have decent ideals . . . mostly. Republicans have decent ideals . . . mostly. Liberals are not the party they once were . . . they're communists. Constitutionalists have a great name and great ideals . . . almost completely.
Being an active citizen, I am constantly contacting my representatives' offices to express my views for them to represent me. And on this point some have failed at their role.
Party lines be damned. Just be the small government the founding fathers had visualized and not force illogical (gun control), anti-foundation (social programs), and unjust (current tax code) laws . . .
If you don't like this . . . MOD someone else up.
Most nerds I know are socialists or social democrats.
Is this like Eric S. Raymond claiming most programmers are neoconservatives now?
I keep hearing this argument that nerds are well educated. I don't buy it, because to be a nerd, you have to have a specialized technical education. This precludes nerds from being well educated in matters of a non-technical nature.
Groups of individuals all wanting to be kings are oppressive.
I have libertarian leanings in that I want smart people to be unfettered by the mob of individual kings, who seem to want to tear down anyone who rises above.
I'm also a realist. I know we need strong leadership.
I'm also a leftist in that I think Social Darwinism is a lie. Economics does not reward the best technology, or the best people. It rewards the best products and the most useless people.
All of these ideas are best stated in Plato's Republic and to a more articulate degree in Nietzsche's On Truth and Lies in a Non-Moral Sense, minus the obvious critique of capitalism.
I do not trust a capitalist, democratic society any more than I would trust a communist, authoritarian one. Both suppress the best of humanity so that most people can be comfortable with their miniscule role in the cosmos, inflated by human pretense.
My solution can be found at CORRUPT.
Anti-Globalism
I've got a great idea. How about I decide for myself and you decide for yourself, regardless of whose "yardstick" our decision capacity are measured.
i was raised to value freedom and liberty as an American citizen. i find my government does not value freedom and liberty of the people enough. thus i consider myself a libertarian, with civil liberty being my number one concern in this messed up country of mine.
-
ac
I think I'm a geek, this reads like a psychological profile of me. I am however relatively poor for a native of a western society. Personally I'm an anarchist, although not the window smashing reactionary kind. I suspect we are broadly libertarian because we are smart, we can see through the lies that the authoritarians use to bolster their authority.
I'm not sure what I would call myself. If I had a different set of beliefs about the evolution of the economy, I would probably be libertarian.
Unlike what some others have said here, intelligence doesn't enter into the equation (at least for me). What it boils down to is that I distrust the possibility that power will be concentrated in the hands of a small enough number of entities that they will get away with taking away certain powers of mine that are important to me.
If I thought that telling the government "hands off!" would be enough to prevent that, then I would be a libertarian, but as far as I can tell, a libertarian society simply permits an unacceptable concentration of power in the corporate sector. So there's no good label for me.
Because they like to know where all the good books are filed?
This guy's the limit!
LOLbertarians.
And this is the core of libertarian thought: if I'm not hurting you, leave me the hell alone. Don't tell me what to do. Don't order me to attend your schools. Don't take my money for your causes. Let me trade freely (for example, let me buy sugar from Cuba). Let me read, or view, or say, what I want. I don't need you to tell me what to do; I'm quite capable of figuring it out for myself. Let me have sex with any adult I want, male or female (n.b. I'm quite straight, but I see no reason to surpress other adults' desires; I'm still protective of minors). Let me put into my body what I choose to put in it.
Completely vague. What you might be doing might not directly hurt some person, but indirectly hurt the future of the society at large. Libertarian societies are going to produce a few wealthy, bored people and no great art.
Libertarianism by itself is a dummy solution. It liberates the individual, and lets society go to rot, which leads to a third world state with a few rich people in it. That sounds totally exciting, and it's what's going to happen anyway in the USA.
Whatever
Anti-Globalism
The way "Your rights online" is one of the busiest /. categories, the way half the stories have little or nothing to do with IT, and the way articles are almost always spun in terms of "What individual rights will be lost?" rather than "What might society as a whole gain?", for example?
Both right wing and left wing parties are defending individual rights these days. What has it helped? No, really, has it saved us from government? No. Has it made better individuals? Doubtful. Is it helping the good guys win, and the bad guys lose? Hell no.
What good are "rights" when your social design is rotten?
Anti-Globalism
"To put it succinctly, the libertarian believes in the freedom of individuals to pursue their lives as they see fit, as long as they cause no harm to others, with minimal governmental interference."
When your society is 90% fools, this means you will spend all of your time working around the damage they incur. They're causing no harm, because they don't mean to, but they'll make sure everything gets dumbed down to the point where no smart person will be able to rise above the herd.
Like in Norway.
Anti-Globalism
Public schools and the private schools that emulate them teach children to be Republicans or Democrats. Only those who get their information from outside such schools -- elite private schools for the rich (rare), or anyone going to a libary (boring, and thus rare), or anyone surfing the web (interesting, common, but until only relatively recently done so exclusively by nerds) -- will learn about that false dichotomy, the lies of history taught in common schools, and what the alternatives are.
I'm also a leftist (please note, that's *self-described*, not like some a*hole on Faux News calling say, former Pres. Jimmy Carter "on the left"), and I've seen a lot of that, too.
On the other hand, over the last four or so years, I've been hearing less and less from them. My take is that the neofascist "neocons" have been using most of their language for a dozen and more years, and people they voted for have resulted in the invasion of Iraq, the "Real ID" law, and on, and on, while corporations take on the powers of government[1,2]. Sort of like whe a ktten wants to bite my finger, and I give them more of it, they change their mind.
Wish that it was that little damage, rather than the destruction of international law, hundreds of thousands of deaths, and a far more dangerous world. Oh, and the destruction of the US actual base of production[3], shipping it all overseas for cheap labor.
Perhaps they see themselves as "lone and self-reliant, like Those That Built America[4]. Or they're identifying with the wealthy, thinking that they're going to be wealthy Any Minute Now[5]. Meanwhile, *I* look at their "enlightened self-interest", and see a 180 degree disconnect with reality[6].
Maybe they'll wake up someday, instead of just keeping a lower profile.
1] For example, the "competition" becomes the growth of monopolies, who *own* the governemnt in the US.
2] The first fascist dictator, Mussolini, one of those who invented fascism, used to like to quote that "fascism is more properly called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power".
3] Most of everything from our steel our silicon can't be made in the US - no factories anymore. Meanwhile, I get irritated every time I hear some a*hole bank or insurance company talking about 'products", as though they actually made something tangible, rather than providing financial *services*.
4] Which is a complete crock. Immigrants came over here and built *communities*, and the loaners where the ones who couldn't make it.
5] So they've allowed the destruction of unions, and diss unions, while they work at jobs that cheerfully say "whatever it takes", and leaves them with no life, and no time to spend what they make, and, if you add up their actual hours (for the salaried) with what they make, they're making *way* less per hour.
6] For example, they should *want* a good public education system, since the costs are spread over a lot of people, and it isn't *only* out of their personal pockets. The same for college... but then, that whole system shouldn't be funded by property taxes, but much more by income taxes. And before anyone responds to that, note that according to the IRS Website (irs.gov), half the households in the US live on *less* than $30k/yr. Buy a house? Healthcare? Hah. Hah. Hah.
mark
I dunno maybe because we like Freedom, Liberty, and well the entire constitution, not just bits and pieces of it like the far left or far right.
Don't Vote for Norm Dicks! http://www.nodicks2008.com Another nutless dirtbag that voted for the FISA bill!
Write-in category: Dilbertarians. :)
This is such a great question and I'm glad that it was broached here on Slashdot. There is clearly a libertarian lean here, so it seems like a valid question to ask here.
One thing I have considered with regards to this is whether people's social experience have something to do with being libertarian. I could just be setting myself up as flame-bait, but I wonder if people who have been loners (as many of the people on Slashdot have or are) are more likely to be libertarian. Libertarians generally believe in letting people do their own thing. There's no reason for the government to meddle with the affairs of individuals. This could very well partially come from the fact that nerds generally don't have a lot of social interaction. They have largely made their lives individually, without the help of others and feel that everyone else should do the same thing.
This could explain why I am most definitely not libertarian. I am very progressive. While I agree with libertarians on some points, my reasons for arriving at those issues are quite different. I believe in welfare, universal health care, and all of that sort of socialist stuff. But I have always been a very social person. As well as a software engineer I am also a professional actor. So, maybe that is the reason I am not a libertarian regardless of the fact that I am a total geek.
Of course, people are going to respond saying that they are very socially active, but nevertheless are libertarian. That's fine. The above is just a thought that maybe this is a component for some people, not all.
In a system, you can't do just one thing.
In a chaotic, evolutionary system, you can't see very far ahead.
If you can't predict any future in any detail, how do you prescribe a path to a desired future?
Thus, all grand schemes for improving the future are complete BS.
Ideology, political, religious, 'spiritual' has proven to be a terrible intellectual tool for changing the world for the better. All approaches that allow words/ideas to dominate facts are ideological.
As engineers and scientists, we strive to live by the best empirically-proven theories. We have a completely different set of facts, assumptions, understandings that guide our decisions, compared to our ideologically-oriented peers.
Lew
Libertarianism rewards thought. (See the 1st chapter of Ayn Rand's "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal") We computer geeks think, and are used to being rewarded for thinking.
In a libertarian system leaves you nobody to whine to. Try whining in a libertarian system, and you get about as much sympathy as if you call tech support. (i.e., None.)
Libertarian systems reward work, just like the process of learning to code rewards work.
Libertarian systems leave innovation to the masses. Given what the free market has done for PC speeds, we trust in corporate innovation, and in the little guy with a nuclear reactor in his garage.
Libertarian systems do away with limits on what you can do that are imposed by the government. No govt V-chip, no govt DRM, do govt Carnivore (email snooping.) I hate being told I can not do something. I don't mind paying a few bucks, but I don't want to be told "No!" That's the main reason Linux is so popular. If Micro$oft would ever get a f***ing clue and let me dial into Windows Update, pay $89 to letimize my copy of Windows, and then pay $25 to get all the networking tools from their latest Server OS, and pay another $150 to get rid of the DRM, I'd go with WIndows. They don't. They tell me I can not do what I need to do, so I put up with the absurdity of recompiling my OS kernel because at least I am not told "You may not!" Instead, I'm told "I hope you are smart enough & hard working enough."
Libertarian systems don't limit things that are seen as "weird" (like spending more time during your teenage years in front of a PC than with computer-illiterate friends.
Andy Out!
I expected a bunch of rules and such, what I didn't expect was the effect they had on people. ds
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
Bob the Angry Flower's Classic Literature Sequels -- Atlas Shrugged 2: One Hour Later.
In my observation, the reason is far simpler:
It's merely that most nerds have a surplus of "You're not the boss of me! You can't tell me what to do!!"
There are a thousand and one excuses, but they all boil down to that.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
It seems to me like the Internet has made representative democracy obsolete. Why not have distributed democracy now? I feel like representative democracy is now really old and broken technology that hasn't scaled well with the times and has taken on some really unpleasant features that due to inertia, it cannot easily shed.
Libertarians, Dems, Republicans, really all parties should no longer be a concern. It is now not difficult to arrange for lots of clueful, qualified people who directly care about an issue to decide on how to address it.
Why do we need reps to do this for us as a whole? By definition, a representative will never represent the interests of all his constituents.
....the more intelligent, and the more one exercises that intelligence, the less likely to be a Democrat or Republican, and the more likely to value individual freedom.
More than 60,000 Windows programs won't run on Linux.
From the libertarian Party Web Site "Libertarians believe in, and pursue, personal freedom while maintaining personal responsibility. The Libertarian Party itself serves a much larger pro-liberty community with the specific mission of electing Libertarians to public office.
Libertarians strongly oppose any government interfering in their personal, family and business decisions. Essentially, we believe all Americans should be free to live their lives and pursue their interests as they see fit as long as they do no harm to another.
In a nutshell, we are advocates for a smaller government, lower taxes and more freedom." From the Wikipedia entry for Classical Liberalism: "Classical liberalism (also known as traditional liberalism[1] and laissez-faire liberalism[2]) is a doctrine stressing the importance of human rationality, individual property rights, natural rights, the protection of civil liberties, constitutional limitations of government, free markets, and individual freedom from restraint as exemplified in the writings of Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill,[3], Montesquieu, Voltaire [4] and others." The difference is one of marketing, and perhaps your perception.
Deleted
I wish I would have caught this thread much earlier but I'll add my $0.02 anyway. I think the reason so many "nerds" are Libertarians is because of their work ethic lends itself to that model quite nicely. The problem obviously is not all people have that work ethic so the minority ends up doing the majority of the "work". For years I have argued that Socialism is the perfect social model. It always starts a flame war of some kind until I qualify my statement thusly: As soon as we find a large enough group of perfect people we will be able to implement Socialism. Until then all social models will have the fatal flaw of the people who live in it. So to the idealist I say "I am with you!" but I'll be standing over here with the realists just in case :)
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
I'm not sure I buy that argument.
If it were really *all* about the individual, we'd all have:
My point isn't that the act of creating isn't an intensely individual activity, but that it doesn't exist in a vacuum. You don't have to be a critical theorist to recognize that we are all products of our environment, and are shaped by the people around us. The actual act of sitting in a room and typing out a new program on your computer may not be a group activity, but it is supported by myriad collective activities.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Because nerds are not sheep like regular people. They are smart. They know what freedom means, and how to lose it. Libertarians are people who value the most importaint part of a government, freedom.
All this talk about libertarian nerds and no mention of BioShock? The game seems like a dystopian libertarian future to me...
I'm a military brat.
There are 4 general types who join the military:
1- Service - they feel they own it/something to the country.
2- Poor - entering the military is a way up and out. College money is the main incentive.
3- Abused - entering the military is a sure way away from an abusive family
4- Future politicians - anyone who wants to be a politician in the future has greater "standing" if they've served in some capacity.
Politicians - I have a friend at work. Smart guy. He put himself through college and has gotten jobs at high growth tech companies with stock options. His parents aren't wealthy, nor poor. Before age 30, he had $2M in investments and diversified them outside the company stock. At 33, he was working in another company - huge company and slowly moving up the ladder. Basically, he's never failed that I can see, in anything important. His mid-life crisis happens and he wonders - "is this all?" Just like many of us do that aren't financially challenged anymore. His answer was that he wanted power and since it was becoming difficult in the current company, he made a conscious decision to enter politics. He started by giving money to the party of his choice and that opened doors to meet people in that party. He's met the highest people and has the photographs to prove it. At age 34, he applied and received a commission in the US Navy Reserves. He had no prior military experience.
Why would someone who has already achieved financial success and never really need to work again go into the military? See reasons 1 & 4 above. I think our friend is both. I obviously like this guy - he'll make a good politician, except that I believe anyone who wants power shouldn't be allowed to have it.
Ok, so now there is a rebellion and his military team is sent to support the state militia - I'm I certain they wouldn't fire on anyone threatening his team? No. Would he give an order to shoot? Yes, but only as a last resort. Could a firecracker cause shooting on both sides - you bet and we'd all feel bad afterward. All except those who were killed, by accident. They'd feel nothing or worse depending on your afterlife beliefs.
The sad truth is that since the 60's, the Left has ideologically advocated taking away an individual's right to choose in every facet of our lives except in matters pertaining to sex.
By freedom of choice, I mean that the legal authority to make decisions rest solely with the individual. If an individual can as a practical matter chose between actions A or B without the threat of punishment by the state, then we can say that individual possess freedom of choice in that circumstance. If we look at Leftist policy recommendations in every area of life except sex, we find they believe that the state should make decisions instead of the individual.
Prior to the 1960s, one could at least rely on the Left to protect free speech. Yet, since then, the Left has waged a war on all speech, unrelated to sex, that they disapprove of. They protect speech relating to sex rigorously but feel no qualms about advocating censoring depictions of violence, the speech of corporations or non-leftist speech on public airways. Leftist dominated universities have become the only public places in America where an individual can be actively penalized for speech that isn't incitement.
Let's look at major policy areas and see if Leftists advocate individual choice: Health care? Nope. Social security? Nope. Employment? Nope. Crime? Nope. Housing? Nope. Transportation? Nope. Environment? Nope. Education? Big Nope. Communications? Nope. Economics in general? Nope.
Leftist often mistake state benevolence with individual choice. They believe that if the state gives an individual some material resource or promises to treat them "fairly" then that offsets all losses of individual choice. It doesn't.
I to have noticed that the computer industry seems to hold a higher proportion of Libertarians than other fields. Many factors go into people's political choices but I think the fact that the high number of self-employed, entrepreneurial people in the computer field means that far more of them run into the many restrictions on individual choice than people do in other fields. When a person pours everything they have into creating something knew having some politician wander by and claim they know better want needs to be done rankles to say the least.
My mistake. I formed my views on libertarians from those people with "air-time". Since libertarianism isn't a term I'm used to in the political scope of where I live, I didn't really have any other place to form my opinion.
:)
I guess 'libertarian' is just one more term suffering from over-simplification.
Test:
What is their response to the idea
All the roads should be run be private companies for profit?
It's not "Just the nerds";
Why are so many people not allowed to vote, or why is their libertarian vote "lost"?
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
Anyone who truly values freedom, and would like to see it restored to the U.S. of A. please take a 60 second break from slashdot, and head over to ronpaulrally.org, where over 2000 people have already uploaded photos in support of Congressman Ron Paul.
For anyone who doesn't know, Ron Paul has served over 20 years in U.S. Congress and is the only libertarian (small "L") to do so. He is now running for President of the U.S.A.
He doesn't get much press, but there is a serious freedom movement happening, and he has a real chance. 40,000 Ron Paul meetup members, thousands of YouTube videos.
Be a part of it. Check This Full Page Ad that was featured in Iowa recently.
Intelligence and Logic.
Socialism (including left-liberalism and neo-conservatism) is based on ignorance and/or emotion.
It's just that Libertarians insecure in their own politcal beliefs turn out to be even shriller than Democrats. Shrill==heard more prominently!=more numerous. You might as well ask why so many Koreans shoot up American college campuses.
Methinks you've been drinking too much of ESR's kool-aid.
Nerds can do enough math to understand that everything done by government must be paid for by taxes, and that if one allows U.S. government to take on tasks that are outside of the scope of what the U.S. Constitution says U.S. government should do, then the result becomes very expensive. They are able to deal with large numbers in the millions and billions, and to understand why there are not enough rich people to make "tax the rich" solve the problem of paying for excessively large government.
Nerds can do enough math to understand why government borrowing beyond a certain point, and inflation caused by government borrowing, are usually bad things, and more often tend to be the result of government trying to do too many things.
Nerds understand the historical relationship between gun control and governments doing things that there is a consensus that they should not have done. A very good example is outlined by Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, which shows how the same gun-laws which were enforced by the Nazis against the Jews were copied verbatim into American gun-laws. You can see the German on one page and the English on the other, and the record of the translation being done by a Connecticut senator (father of the current Dodd), and the sponsoring of the law based on the English translation.
Nerds understand Economics such that if government solves a problem, the government solution is the only game in town. It is often ineffective, and also very wasteful. The War on Poverty is a good example. If a problem is solved not by government, then it is possible to have multiple competitors, trying different approaches, so that the best competitor wins. One of my favorite examples is ASECert.org, the blue and white ASE certified plaque you can see at the shops of some auto mechanics. It has been my experience that ASE members do a good job, and that mechanics who are not ASE certified are less reliable. I now look for ASE cert when I choose an auto mechanic.
Nerds understand history which shows that laws which try to protect people from their own bad judgement don't work. For example, alcohol prohibition did not have the desired effect, and funded organized crime which did things that were worse (protection rackets, assassinations etc.). Marijuana prohibition also does not prevent use, increases the human cost due to product which is not what people think they are buying (Marijuana with spiked Opium, for example), and funds criminal organizations which these days more often engaged in terrorism, civil war, kidnapping foreigners for ransom, weapons smuggling) than in gambling and prostitution, as the alcohol prohibition criminals were more likely to do.
I could go on in similar vein, but that's enough.
mgwmgw
So a rational, analytical nerd who sees vast suffering caused by circumstances and accidents of birth, and thinks that it can be addressed effectively through marginal collective action like taxes paying for health care for all is, what, deluded? Wrong?
Of course. Everybody knows that individual suffering is caused by choices, not circumstance.
I mean, if you're born into a poor neighborhood (which receives little money for school thanks to the way US schools are funded), it's your parent's fault for choosing to live in a poor neighborhood. They should move to Beverly Hills, where they have an excellent school system. If they can't afford excellent health care coverage (like about 33% of the nation can't afford) because they work at Wal*Mart, they should get a better job, say as a DBA or programmer/analyst. If they can't get a decent-paying job because of education, they should've gone to college. If they can't afford college, they should've gotten a better job to pay for college, or been born into a rich family living in Beverly Hills.
I mean, poor people are always trying to blame someone other than themselves.
(In case you miss the irony: a child in daycare generally costs 75% as much per hour as a person working a minimum wage job takes home in an hour. That means working a minimum wage job leaves almost nothing for the niceties of life, such as food or shelter. You figure out which end of the political spectrum on which I fall.)
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
We saw almost exactly the same thing in Britain in the late 70s, with the anarchists. They were rebelling against an overly heavy-handed and nonsensical authority, and thus became reactionary to the very *idea* of regulation and law.
Libertarian ideology makes the false assumption that everyone is a rationally self-interested, intelligent creature. This is not true. Most people are fairly stupid, and are thus relatively defenseless against intelligent, amoral people, who are quite willing to abuse their power for another pound of flesh.
The reality is, unless a country monitors its market closely, corporations and businesses will very quickly abuse their considerable power. If a country doesn't require companies to conform to strict laws regarding health and safety, employees' and customers' rights, minimum wage and so on, said companies will simply ignore any such guidelines. Furthermore, unless prevented from doing so, companies will leverage their wealth and power to drag ever-more resources from those that cannot defend themselves. Companies have been modeled before as rich sociopaths with a drive to make money - this model is not inaccurate.
The same situation applies, albeit less dangerously, to individuals. You may thing resource consent for building is stupid, but you'd probably think differently if your neighbor built a 5-story apartment block directly in your view of the harbour. You may think that smoking is a personal choice and should be allowed in bars, restaurants and so on - but the day your mate is diagnosed with lung cancer after working as a waiter for 10 years, you might change your mind. You may think that paying taxes is unjust and immoral, but when your roads start falling apart, when schools all close, when courts cease functioning, then you might realise that it's a necessary evil.
I think the issue here is not so much that regulation per se is bad, but that some countries, particularly the US (where most of you lot are from) have stupid, inane and wasteful regulation. You pay taxes, and your government wastes however-many billions of it on a pointless arms-race with no one, pours more into bureaucracy, and then fails to provide even basic services like functional healthcare. It's hardly surprising so many people in the US are upset, but this is a problem with *this* government, not government in general.
The US is simply too big a unit to be governed centrally - each state needs to be an independent country (or possibly groups of states), without any kind of overarching government. This would be great for people in the US, and it'd probably give the rest of the world a well-deserved break from US imperialism.
Here's my couple of cents:
;). So I'll just define it the way I like to, as an individual, that although very handy with technical subjects, logic and math, has some difficulty with social relationships. He usually has a scientific, skeptical attitude, is self-reliant (and self-important) and is frequently a sci-fi induced idealist (either an optimist or a pessimist, depends on the person).
There're two terms that aren't defined well enough for me in this post. First, what is a libertarian. I see lots of people here attacking each other based on what they think libertarianism stands for, but nobody can agree on what it is. Maybe it's because I'm not American that I don't understand perfectly what the word means, but it seems to me that most of the people here don't either.
The second is what constitutes a nerd. Most nerds here are self proclaimed, but since they're here (news for nerds etc.), I'll accept their claims
And to my point - a person such as described above will usually be an individualist - since logically, society does not exist, only collections of individuals really do. Also, he'll tend to discount social effects due to his anti-social tendencies. Thirdly, a person with a skeptical frame of mind will not swallow government propaganda easily, and tend to keep an eye on where he's being screwed.
Taken all together, I'd say the most frequent political attitude found in geeks should be strongly pro-individual and anti-government, which my experience corroborates. Is this libertarianism? You tell me.
is why nerds tend to be losertarians.
By and large, nerds spend a great deal of time gaming or coding in their parents' basements while masturbating to Ayn Rand.
Those that go out into the real world, however, soon learn that, by golly, not having health care sucks. It sucks even harder when your job gets outsourced to India or China. Having learned the hard way that capitalism only works for the top fraction of a percent, they soon begin clamoring for government funded health care, housing, job guarantees, etc.
ESR is a perfect example of this. In one breath he rails against the many evils Micro$oft has committed. In the next, he's calling for the repeal of all antitrust laws because "the free market will take care of the problem." News flash, man, the free market is what got us into this mess.
...that "so many nerds" are libertarians, it's probably because nerds don't do well with the kind of chaotic, unpredictable systems you find in politics, and so they insist we have as little politics as possible. :)
Of course, there are plenty of highly political nerds with social views besides libertarianism, so don't reply with that "But I'm a socialist/conservative nerd!" piffle. We're talking about a (claimed) statistical trend, here.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
First you need to realize that there are two broad types of libertarians, the personal liberty type and the economic liberty type.
The personal liberty type (I can do whatever I want as long as I'm not harming others) are utopians who only look at those aspects of communal living (that is modern society) which they disapprove of. If they don't like drug laws then they claim there should be none. If they don't like seat belt laws than risk should be borne by the driver. The oversimplify and refuse to examine the fact that there are no consequence-free choices. Doing something that the majority in a democratic society has decided shouldn't be done has negative effects on others.
The economic liberty type (It's my property, or earnings or wealth) is actually a shill (or unwitting shill) for the super wealthy. This model only considers the rights of the possessor of property and ignores the social cost that was incurred when they obtained their property. They also claim to believe in personal liberty except that they want a strong police/military/legal system in place to protect their property rights.
This group would not have the presence that it does if it weren't supported by a small group of super weathy families which provide the money to the "think tanks" that give the intellectual veneer to what is, essentially, greed.
The best place to start is to study the actions of Charles Koch and his support of such places as the Cato Institute.
Here's a good link to begin with.
Media Transparency
Many people think we are engaged in a battle over ideas, but the wealthy are just in it for the money. They buy the intellectuals they need (and the politicians too). Until people realize the real power of this small core of super wealthy conservatives they will continue to tilt at windmills.
-- Robert D Feinman Landscapes, Panoramas, Photoshop Tips and Musings on Society
I'll be frank, you are way off base here. I think the reason many geeks are libertarians is because they are aware of this country's MASSIVE deficit and because whenever the economy fails, geeks are always the first to be given pink slips. Simply put, scientists, engineers, and technicians are highly acquainted with mathematics and this makes them sensitive to big numbers in economics. Anyone with an understanding of compound interest, and a healthy dose of non-apathy, is almost certainly a fiscal conservative. How can you shrug off the trillions of dollars of national debt? Reaganomics need not apply, this deficit is real, it is growing unbelievably, and it *WILL* collapse our economy. It is scary stuff.
Because we are all Vulcans!
Spock: Nowhere am I so desperately needed as among a shipload of illogical humans.
feel free to label me a leftist-libertarian. If only Karl Marx had spent a little less of his time wandering into tailor's shops enquiring after the prices of cloth...
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
"It's a disease, I tell you. The apparent inability to accept the fact that we're not all a uniform gray paste." http://lists.osdl.org/pipermail/desktop_architects /2007-February/001131.html
Anti-Globalism
Hanging in there through the complexities and compromises of the platforms developed by the two major parties requires character assets that are in short supply among nerds. Social nuance. Ability to understand from what's *not* said. The difference between a hope, a position, a plan, and a commitment.
We think like engineers so we want something simple, elegant, and algorithmic, which is great for software but not much like life and not much like how non-nerds think. We're divorced from reality, which is what drives us to computers and technology, and we wish that all of "them" would just get it (whatever "it" is). We figure that since we're good engineers, we're good social engineers too.
So the Libertarian's simple avoidance of most of the issues grappled with by governments today, with their imperfect batting average, appeals to us. And we really do believe in silver bullets, so the untested tenets of Libertarianism, being the stance with no record which we can imagine will produce good results, beats the reality of systems that we know, and know to be imperfect.
No. Your sucess, if any, is tied to the demand for your skills.
Good thoughtful posts on this subject. Because libertarians tend to think for themselves, there are numerous individual principled rationales. Here's mine.
I sympathize with the minority, especially the minority of one. Truly original thinkers are likely to find themselves in the minority almost all the time. Yet they are never asked for their consent to be governed. Small wonder then that they become embittered and think of the government as their enemy.
We enforce the will of the majority by violence or the threat of violence. If the majority votes for an initiative that costs money, taxes must be collected. A minority voter must pay those taxes or face arrest. If he resists arrests the law is enforced by violence. The problem is long recognized. It is called the tyranny of the majority. It was discussed extensively in the Federalist Papers.
I believe that respect for the rights of the minority should compel us to use governance by the will of the majority only when it can not be avoided. National security (i.e. war) and personal security (i.e. protection from thieves and murders) are to often cited examples of governance that can not be avoided. However, the vast majority of our laws are justified on the basis of general welfare. As a libertarian, I reject general welfare as sufficient justification for imposing the will of the majority by violence.
I can't help to note that it is easy to imagine systems of government that respect the minority more than majority rules. Suppose we took a vote on some issue and the result is 99% aye and 1% nay. In a modified democracy, we would then roll the dice in a game rigged so that the aye side has a 99% chance of winning. That way the minority would get to have their way at least some of the time. I suspect that such a modified democracy would tend to dampen extremes and promote more moderate positions on issues because the majority could never be sure of the outcome.
I also note that countries with parliamentary governments and numerous parties also give more influence to minorities. After an election the plurality party is forced to form a coalition with one or more minority parties to form a government. To form the alliance, they have to promise to allow the minority parties to have their way some of the time.
OK, it's a bit heated, so here's a joke:
How many libertarians does it take to stop a tank?
None. The free market will taker care of it.
(Also works with change a lightbulb etc etc)
I was following along, nodding my head, until I came to:
Take a look at the United States, very recently the "greatest nation on earth." We have, so far, been completely unable to adapt to the emerging globalism.
In what way has the US been unable to adapt to globalism?
We have globalized the hell out of labor, and even our culture! America has economic ties across the globe and even small businesses work with overseas partners now. Would it not be accurate to say that America has more ecenomic links to the widest array of cultures and other countries than anyone else at this point?
I would say if anything, what we have seen is a dislike of some of the rest of the world with how well we have adopted to a more global stance, and are influencing cultures throughout the world with media and merchandise. That is not a failure of the US to adopt to globalism, that is America through a position of strength dictating some of the terms of globalism and counties that had other plans going "hey!". But as you said there will always be disagreements, so nations will always vye for things that end up being in thier best interests. It just happens that Americans are very good at that... and to bring this back on topic I would say that is due in large part to a libertarian mindset that says we the people can do that without waiting for help from the government to take action.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
DENNIS: [Monty Python & the Holy Grail]
I told you. We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week,...
[also choice bits which are definitive of the state of politics today; ]
Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
I mean, if I went 'round saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they'd put me away
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Centralized decisions made by a few for everybody are never as good as decisions made on the individual level. This applies both to social issues (where the left seems to understand this principle) and on economic issues (where the right seems to understand it). Libertarians are the only group that apply the same principles to both issues.
I think the social issues side of the spectrum is more universally accepted among geeks, as many of us don't conform to society's definition of "normal." I don't feel as though social freedom needs to be defended among this crowd. But for me personally, the economic side is far more important. The free market screws some people, but on balance it is singularly responsible for the explosion in technological advancement and improvement of quality of life since Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations was written and the founding of the US on his principles.
The people that get screwed in a free market get screwed for a reason. The reason is simple, on a macro scale - too many people trying to do the same thing (for example, flipping burgers). The market as a whole is telling us that there are too many people trying to do this economically unproductive job. Forcibly raising wages does nothing but encourage these people to stay in these jobs - whereas if the wages float according to supply and demand (of workers), it will settle on an optimum level, and those that move elsewhere will provide a service that is more needed.
Even more importantly, the people who get screwed in a free market have a recourse. All the options of the free market are still open for them to take advantage of. A centralized government decision will screw people over as well, though it will screw over a different subset of people (and according to economics, it will be on balance a worse solution overall, thereby screwing over MORE people, not fewer). The difference is that those people have no recourse - government is a monopoly, and there is no alternative aside from moving to a different country.
What the free market provides is economic mobility based on how much effort you're willing to put into it. It distributes resources based on the aggregate needs and desires of society - i.e. what is needed and/or wanted by the majority. By contrast, a government-managed system distributes resources based on political connections or what is politically popular. To me, the contrast is clear.
A simple example - how many billions have been poured into Africa in the name of fighting poverty? How much has this accomplished? As a counterexample, how many people have been freed from poverty in the past decade due to the freeing of China's and India's economies? Over half a billion. And they've done it by providing a needed or wanted service to their society, not by sucking up and burning single-use foreign aid money.
I don't know any librarians. wait, what?
The situation isn't merely that most nerds are Libertarians. I think most nerds are decentralized on the political spectrum in general. I know as many Green Party nerds as I do Libertarian nerds, but very few who'd call themselves centrist or a member of one of the "ruling" political parties.
To me, the real question is why nerds choose to be (or have decided to be) outside of centrist politics.
-Vendal Thornheart
Nobody likes Uncle Scam up in their crotch. But what drives Libertarianism's bizarre economic ideas?
Jost et al (2003) blew up this idea: people choose an ideology to make themselves feel good. So let's talk about Libertarianism as motivated social cognition!
Libertarainism means wallowing in how "smart" you are. You don't need the government to help you, you're smart! You don't need the government to tell you what to put in your body, you're smart! Oh, those pathetic souls voting republicrat, they don't understand. But you do, you're smart!
That's all fine, fine. Who the fuck likes the nanny state, who wants to reward irresponsibility? But then libertarianism turns stupid: radical deregulation, even scrapping the minimum wage, ending all public services that aren't gun-centric, etc.
No, it's stupid. I'm not going to explain it: I cited Jost et al (2003) so I could get to the heart of libertarianism: fuck-you-ism.
The frothing Objectivist side of libertarianism is chock full of nerd rage. It is pure misanthropy. Overweight coders with testosterone poisoning. People with high IQs and the social skills of a busted levee, cursing the shitty world that dragged them into a miserable, lonely existence. An empty life of shame and hatred motivates the economic side of libertarianism and its bizarre ideas of "self reliance" and the "night watchman state," codewords for social-Darwinism and a Banana Republic.
I'm not saying all libertarians are misanthropes. Some just give lip service to the economic side, while piling on the caveats. Some are non-ideological people reasonably sick of the two-party system. But let's not kid ourselves about the dark core of libertarian ideology. Every ideology has its dark core. But libertarianism seems to have a black hole at its center, a hole of loneliness and hate, and that makes me sad.
But I believe that with faith and effort, even the most awkward person can craft a satisfying, flesh-space social life. First, admit your pain. Then realize the universe is full to the brim, and you're swimming in it. Then take that power, that relief, and keep trying different things. Again and again. It'll hurt like a bitch, but eventually you'll get there! If you don't feel the universe to be like I described, try meditating, exercising, joining a spiritual community, etc.
That may sound stupid, but it's the wisdom of the ages. You'll feel so much better once you get to the other side of your pain! Good luck.
Topic implies a causality when it hasn't even demonstrated a correlation.
Or maybe we read history and understand that governments really are "intrinsically inept, corrupt and oppressive" and never more so than during the middle ages, where governments in cahoots with the church put a halt to all progress for centuries and didn't care that people starved, because it's not about helping people, it's about maintaining power and control. Some of us would like to avoid that happening again, which is why we're libertarians.
Considering, even for a moment, the ideals, principles, and thoughts of our founding fathers seems to be the quickest way to be labeled naive, ignorant or just plain stupid around here. Ad hominem attacks by the bucket-full.
How do we portray outsourcing? Corporations embrace outsourcing, often for the wrong reasons, and in the wrong way; but how is it portrayed in the media, even here on
How does the US handle H1B visas? Not very well.
US corporations are embracing globalisation. The US political and social systems are not. And even the corporations manage to fuck it all up, outsourcing because they can pollute in Mexico, or because Russian/Indian/Chinese programmers are cheaper, or what-have-you, exploiting local economic weaknesses, rather than expanding into global markets to bring the world up to a single standard of living.
Granted, there are lots of good globalisation stories, as you point out. The company for which I work writes software for a Thai telecom corporation, along with companies from Norway and Isreal. So in that respect, America *is* globalizing, just as you say.
From a socialogical standpoint, the US has handled globalisation very poorly. At the moment, most citizens see globalisation as, "The middle-east produces terrorists, and all Mexicans are illegal immegrants," without bothering to understand the source of their viewpoints. The government (which is where Libertarianism ties in) has done everything to *promote* this viewpoint, rather than educate about the realities of the global world.
We *are* influencing other countries, but that's mostly because of our success at branding American culture in TV, movies, and song.
True, that.
Double true.
And that is both good and bad.
I don't think we disagree on this issue. I guess I'm just focusing on the failures, rather than the successes.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Oh, I pretty much agree. If you look at Jefferson, Washington, and others, there is a very clear and well-placed mistrust of government (they did just get done fighting a revolution!). Almost all of the Founders feared oppression and tyranny. Ergo, their greatest contribution to government in the United States, the separation of powers and the insistence on defusing power as much as possible. (Something which modern "conservatives" who claim to revere the Founders seem to have forgotten despite their insistence on States Rights. The modern "conservative" movement sold its soul to the devil when it allied itself to the Religious Right.) But here is where things get interesting.
Their first attempt, the Articles of Confederation, diffused power so much that any form of governing, etc, was impossible. So there definitely seems to be a balance between centralization and decentralization. I'm not sure where it lies but I think the libertarians go too far in the decentralization direction. If we deregulated and decentralized as much as the libertarian idealists would like then we would without a doubt be one of the weakest countries in the world and basically be living in hell on earth. Governments exist to keep the domestic population from killing each other which in turn allows them to fulfill their individual aspirations. However since the government is so bloated and in general dysfunctional I find libertarianism is a good default negative position.
If anyone has any recommendations for readings that present a positive position, I'd love to hear about them.
And suggest that it's because there's really no clear-cut libertarian philosophy. People can pretty much believe whatever the hell they want an call themselves a libertarian. The basic idea is something that pretty much *anyone* can agree with: That individual liberties should trump the government and the government should never act in a way that limits them. But from there people can make any sort of whacky intellectual leap they want. To some people this means and end to the War on Drugs, to some it means privatized Police force, schools and Fire Departments.
I think the libertarian movement, in general, has been (as of late anyways) been boiled down into an "anti-tax" movement -- which is unfortunate. While these views are, in my opinion, a bit extreme (and/or screwballish), it is still possible for many people to find lots of things inside the *basic* libertarian philosophy with which they can agree.
What Makes a Libertarian? is a 1995 posting containing speculation by a CS professor about why libertarianism is so attractive to the CS-inclined. I think the reasoning is sound with respect to some people, but will not go so far as to generalize without Stuart Reges' experience. There is no more direct and plausible answer that I have found explaining this psychological connection.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Libertarianism is founded on a particular flavor of logical extremism, the mathematical superiority (i.e. total consistency) of which may be a natural attraction to brainy types. Actually, it is *not* unique in this claim, as its political opposite (i.e. pure socialism) also has the same property. However, its diametric opposite isn't a very successful ideology for survival, so it doesn't attract many followers. Libertarianism may also encourage a type of myopic world-view that introverted people find comfortable, although I don't think this is a particularly positive way to go about ones' life.
Personally, I think it's because so many nerds grow up socially isolated that they become cynical about society in general. Libertarianism tells them they don't have to give a damn about anyone around them, so naturally they find it attractive.
I tend to think that libertarianism is essentially a long-winded justification for complete, utter selfishness. But, then, I'm a socialist, so what do I know.
The majority of techies I've run into are very much more totalitarian than libertarian. They're smart, understand how things work, and make great decisions. That's why they're so sure they can run your life, too.
I'm glad someone else has recognized this. I have believed for awhile that this arrogance, and the tendency of some nerds to libertarianism, are both symptoms of "High School Nerd Syndrome". In other words, the idea that the "real world" is a place they can finally get back at everyone who made fun of them in high school.
I see this in University as well -- at U of Waterloo, many people in Math, Computer Science, Engineering, etc exist in a hilariously blind culture of superiority. I notice this particularly because I am doing a CS major with a minor in Fine Art, so I am not couped up inside the Math faculty. You can easily tell both students and profs with a narrow view of the world simply by their opinions of "art" students and faculty.
One of my long-time friends (since middle school) was blindly capitalist / individualist in high school. I've always considered him to be a prime example of "high school nerd syndrome." He grew out of it very quickly after high school. I suspect a lot of the libertarians on Slashdot are either in high school, or have never exposed themselves to other perspectives with an open mind (e.g., by taking a philosophy course or an arts course, or even by talking to people with other ideas openly).
The poster far above who asserts that all creativity comes from an individual has probably never worked with an artist. Some of the best *individual* work I have done in drawing or painting classes came from working within a highly creative group of friends. While in almost all cases we were not working on collaborative pieces, the value of a group environment with multiple perspectives is impossible to overstate.
But of course, a coding god has no need of outside input.
First, nerds don't tend to be Libertarians all that much. It just seems that way because pretty much all Libertarians are nerds. But then, pretty much all of the theoretically-based extreme positions are dominated by nerds, because pretty much all theoretically based ANYTHING is dominated by nerds. The kind of obsessive attention to academic details is kind of a defining feature of nerds.
Second, Libertarianism is kind of a meta-philosophy. There's left-libertarians as well as right-libertarians, though the rights tend to dominate because the heartland of libertarianism is America and even a lot of self-identified "left wing" groups in America would be classified as right-wing elsewhere in the world.
Libertarians believe in small government, particularly keeping government out of the operations of the marketplace; limited-to-zero regulation. I don't know what the submitter thinks of as "nerds" but slashdotters definitely are NOT Libertarians. They believe in big government regulation of the software industry, government-sanctioned file formats, government-regulation of what features an OS can have, picking and choosing of winners in the marketplace. Some here have even suggested that all software be "free", paid for by taxes going to a commission that would issue grants of software projects it chooses to support. Government-approved software.
No, slashdotters are anything BUT Libertarians.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
If monopolies were the result of government interference in the marketplace, the late 19th century should have been the golden age of capitalism, not the festering pit of cronyism it actually was. Human misery has seldom reached the heights it did under the robber barons. THAT is what unbridled free-market capitalism does.
The government is also vulnerable to the effects of popular opinion, and chances are that a government will be deposed if it does something vile enough. A corporation, with its sacrosanct property rights, has no such accountability. What is your recourse if the private-highway company, which has become a national monopoly, refuses to allow people of your particular nationality to use the roads? Who are YOU to demand the use of ITS property?
The reason many nerds are libertarian is simple - we like to be logical about things, and we believe in privacy and in small government. We can see both sides of politics use emotive arguments to muddy the waters and cloud the senses and we don't fall for it.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
How many "nerds" specifically, are libertarian compared to non-libertarian? (And what is a "nerd"?)
Libertarianism is growing in popularity globally, but doesn't seem to be the popular view yet. There are no hard and fast cause-effect correlations for the increase in popularity. The "common wisdom" is that people gravitate toward libertarianism when they perceive that it works. I strongly recommend the articles at http://www.mskousen.com/ for interesting discussion points on libertarianism. The articles regarding "Economics in One Page" and "One Graph says it All" are particularly interesting.
According to Economist Bryan Caplan in an article in "The Economist", the higher the education level, the more likely it is that a person will agree with the views of Economics researchers, and these views are not very far apart in most cases.
If, as you suggest, more nerds are leaning toward Libertarianism, then I would forward an hypothesis that those nerds are better educated than the general populace, and that they have a value system that reflects personal responsibility and self-ownership. (You might find good explanations of these views in books by Bastiat, Locke and Mill.)
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
Sure, some forms of libertarianism aren't (e.g., objectivism). But most "progressives" don't know what they are progressing towards. Socialists are hampered by the fact that, as an economic system, it has been proven to be unworkable for decades (though it can work when it has capitalism to support it, e.g. Europe's socialized health care). Conservatives are conserving what, exactly? Its like most of the other political philosophies are only interested in a direction, and not a destination.
It also helps that the internet is an example of perfect capitalism. A working system where force and fraud are practically impossible; where central control is virtually non-existent.
I used to be more of a democrat myself. I hated how our society had poverty, and I'd prefer the economic playing field be more level than not. I was wealthy, so I didn't mind paying taxes. Until I began to watch politics and study economics (Neoclassical and Austrian), I didn't realize just how much government action hurt the poor. Public schools cost more and are less effective than private ones. Government involvement in health care has driven the costs through the roof and created the horrible monstrosity that is managed health care. So many laws and regulations on the books act as regressive taxes against small businesses, the big ones find it just that much easier to succeed. Even the minimum wage (if you count other "minimums", like required health care benefits, otherwise its so low it probably doesn't matter) is likely harmful to poorer Americans (though fortunately for them, illegal immigrants get around it or they might not be employable). And yet for some reason, government neglects its real economic duties, which is to penalize pollution (not regulate it, that often doesn't work) and maintain law and order (which is pretty hard when you fill up jails with pot-smokers).
Its like the pendulum keeps swinging between right and left bizzaro worlds, without ever resting in the sane center. During the Industrial Revolution, government colluded with businesses to allow rampant pollution (disrespect for property rights) and even violence towards unions. Now the pendulum has swung back to the left, where more government regulation is called upon to prevent outsourcing to China (which was created, to some extent, by the costs of regulation in the first place) and to protect those poor sweatshop workers by depriving them of any job altogether (hey, they can always turn to prostitution when their factory closes).
What really turned me over to libertarianism was the health care in this country. After I started studying it, I realized how incredibly cheap it could be if we went from the corporate socialism system we have now, back to capitalism. And I know our "leaders" are not fiscally responsible enough to produce any form of health care that will remain solvent for very long. Hell, Medicare and Social Security are so insolvent its not even funny (I believe the current total is $60 trillion in unfunded present-worth liabilities). I can deal with poor people not driving Ferrari's. Hell, I've driven Corollas and Hyundais, and they really aren't so bad. In many ways they are better forms of transportation than the more expensive alternatives (as they tend to be more reliable). But to deny them good health is extremely immoral, IMO.
Though I think there are far more average-Joe libertarians than anything else (thought they may not know what they are). You're average guy doesn't get much from the government. He pays taxes, and works hard. He probably doesn't know anything about economics, but he doesn't ever see the government to anything to help him out in the workplace. He doesn't see the harm in his neighbor smoking a joint now and then, and doesn't give a damn about the latest international conflict Washington is involved in. He just wants to run his own life. When his mother told him not to steal, and to do unto others and they would do unto you, he listened.
Most intellectuals and nerds tend to think they know h
I am a libertarian nerd, and can assure you, my political leanings were developed long before I ever had much money, or even really had a solid plan to get it. The same is true for most people. I would hazard to guess that most people could be sorted into basic political categories by 7th or 8th grade with a reasonable degree of accuracy.
However, I have noticed over the years a strong tendency for libertarianism vs liberalism based on mathematical ability, and clearly that also correlates with "nerdiness".
Given the strong tendency of nerds to think of themselves as superior beings, and the strong tendency of libertarians to do likewise, it's hardly surprising that (a) there are quite a few libertarian nerds, and (b) the comments attached to this story quickly took a turn for the hilarious. I think we all predicted as we read it that it wouldn't take long for the first "a lot of nerds are libertarians because they tend to be smarter than the rest of the population" comments.
Oh, and when you add to that the fact that many nerds are in well-paid technical jobs, and that the core central overriding philosophy of libertarianism is "I don't want to pay tax," it's even less surprising that you find a bunch of vocal libertarians on nerd sites like Slashdot.
Norway has....Norwegians, oil and diplomats.
Note that the price could have been set at $200, and only $90 less social profit total would have been made in theory. On the other hand, you had to collect $1000 in tax, which has dead-weight losses much larger than the $90 (15-20% is a typical "textbook" estimate). You already had to bend the numbers well beyond reality to even observe your desired effect. Now you will have to bend them 2-3 times further to get things to tip your way.
Being half-right can be as bad being completely wrong.
"an irrational passion for dispassionate rationality"
:).
Ayn Rand and many others of her ilk try so hard to be right that they loop all the way back to profoundly wrong
My video compression blog
Libertarians are fucking stupid as shit. Nerds tend to be fucking stupid as shit outside of their core competency. They think that since they are good at Thing X, their way of thinking is correct, and they're fucking stupid, like Libertarians. Basically, nerds are fucking stupid.
I'm not sure you can simplify things to anything less than an N-dimensional space, where N is the number of issues and N is clearly very large. On all those political tests, I'm all over the map, because the ideals they're based on have absolutely nothing to do with my views.
My view is that all of these political axes are silly. You could just about simplify each of them down to something like:
Us Hitler
"I think a strict set of laws fosters irresponsibility. It's counter-productive."
That's one of the problems common to ALL "-isims" and part of the reason I don't subscribe to any of them.
The Academy: The aim of Military trainning is to get young men to follow orders without question since contemplating one's navel when you hit the battle field is not a good survival technique. However just because it works for the military doesn't mean it works for politics. There have been some very successfull and long lived "warrior cultures", but they tend to fall apart when there is nothing left to conquer.
"the lesson I learned is that no system of rules and laws is capable of positively shaping a culture"
IMHO "rules and laws" are preferable to anarchy in all but the most extreme "isims".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
"When I hear people like Bill Maher profess that they are libertarians I shutter. "
That's quite a picture you're conjuring up...
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
An old classmate of mine once made a rather sexist observation. He said that women make poor programmers because they expect machines to respond to them the way people do. The extent to which this might be true isn't the point -- I mentioned it because I think that a lot of nerds suffer from the opposite problem: they expect people to respond to them they way machines do.
This is evident in their stereotypical lack of social skills, but I think it might also manifest as a fascination with libertarianism. Libertarianism (on the economic side) makes the same kinds of assumptions about human behavior that nerds do -- that people are guided in their decision-making primarily by rationality and logic, much like a computer. Libertarianism would seem to work great if you viewed human behavior in that way.
Unfortunately, the world is full of illogical people, and even nerds are not as rational as most of them imagine themselves to be.
Another reason -- and I have nothing but anecdotal evidence to support this -- could partly be because nerds tend to scoff at the idea of a well-rounded secondary education. More than any other group I've encountered, they gripe about having to take classes outside of their major. They simply don't see the value. As a result, they tend to come out of college with a narrower world view. They are exceptionally good at solving problems within their area of expertise, but that area is typically quite narrow, and generally not very applicable to evaluating political philosophies.
(Obviously, this doesn't apply to all nerds; not even to all libertarian nerds. It's just a tendency that I suspect exists.)
Why would I or any sane person want a corporate oligarchy over a democratically elected government? That is exactly what one would get if right wing libertarianism would prevail.
Under libertarianism the free market would prevail as the arbiter of all disputes. If company A pollutes the the river people wont't buy their product. Why not? If company A produces a product that is inferior competition will force them out of business or at least make them second tier. There wouldn't be any competition because company A owns all the aluminum refineries and fab plants. Our roads would be better because when they are privately owned and there are potholes and unrepaired heaving of the pavement people will use the other three competing interstates that are running parallel to the first.
Not only is there not a free market if there was it wouldn't work. Capitalism itself is undemocratic the only thing that makes it palatable at all is the fact the government regulates its excesses. We have already experienced what happens when the government allows capitalists to run wild under the Bush administration. You get a government owned by the wealthy for the wealthy to the detriment of most people. I really don't want to see that amplified. Capital and property should never be the measure of all things. The market needs to be regulated and reason, fairness, and ethics need to be at the heart of decision making. The freedom, rights, and the civil liberties of the individual should be paramount, but this needs to be tempered by the common wealth, and the common good. Government needs to be reformed to be transparent, free of the influence of money, religion, and narrow special interests. Media monopolies need to be broken up so that we have a diversity of views and wealth does not control our information.
Workers rights are right in the constitution: the right to free association. Unions have no power to force membership (unlike the government and taxes) but, of course, the government meddling (in the interest of empowering corporations against those who choose to organize) is what fucks the rest of it up.
BTW, I (dunno about parent) am against the FDA and "net neutrality" and msot of the rest. The FCC should exist to allocate blocks of spectrum in the interest of the people, not to the highest bidder, and to ensure reliable communications - just like a highway department that ensures safe roads, etc. Just since you mentioned it...
Nerds are keenly aware that their only chance to get with attractive women is to become exceptionally successful and wealthy, and that is much easier to do in a free market than in an economic system that has the government redistribute wealth as they'll keep a much larger portion of their higher salaries that come with technical degrees (patent law pays better than teaching philosophy)?
Lets Set So Double The Killer Delete Select All that last post, I really should search once in awhile....
"Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies." -Thomas Jefferson
That's happening as we speak. Which is why Libertarianism can never happen: not many people follow your logic. You even have major dissent among the nerd crowd. Starting with me, of course.
You mean the way Libertarians consider their opposition "communists" or "statists" (translation: less than human).
On planet Libertaria, I can imagine that question being quite relevant when you Libertarians find yourselves confronted with a socialist counterculture. Yeehaw, get your thirty oughts we's goin for some target practice, yip yiiip!!
You mean, the ends justify the means?
I'd rather be sacrificed by a bullet to the head right quick, right now, than be one of the unlucky people in your paradise of greed and selfishness, one of the poor people who are sentenced to die slowly by starvation.
Oh and about all those weapons you keep talking about wanting the unrestricted right to having? I'm in favor of that, actually. Especially when the starving masses use them against you. Happens every time a "Libertaria" is founded. Oh wait, there has never been a Libertaria. It's nothing more than a myth.
Dead by a Communist's bullet, or dead by toxic waste, cancer, or simple starvation? Dead is still dead, whether it's by the malice of Communism or the utter negligence and apathy of Libertarianism.
Communism is the enemy of freedom; Libertarianism could lead to human extinction.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
And nerds realise that you have to do both to make software that works.
This is all just my personal opinion.
> The winner of this race is the person who comes closest to the average time.
That's so... fair.
The only problem I see is if you have to deal with reality at some point. Otherwise, Family Feud sports sounds very nice and solipsistic.
I've been accused of being a libertarian, but have found that party to be mostly filled with nut jobs. I am an independent voter.
My own general philosophy has been that the US government is incompetent, and as such should do as little as possible, and spend as little of my money as possible to do it.
I'd love socialized health care, but do I really trust the same folks that created the DMV or government schools with my health?
I'm all for protecting legitimate inventions, but is our patent office really accomplishing that?
Why do prices go up? If there was a finite supply of money, as there were more and more people it would become worth more, not less! Well, that is because the US government is constantly printing more money. But where does this money go? Well that is what the political parties fight over. Really, that is all that they are actually about, everything else is just window dressing.
Myself, I wonder why we have to pay taxes when they are just going to print any amount of money that they want, anyway? Is it to maintain the illusion that they don't actually do that?
Wouldn't it be better if they just didn't spend the money in the first place? Obviously, there are some things that DO need to be done by government, but couldn't they do it more efficiently?
He said "best", not the ideal...which means that, when compared to most other countries, Norway is one of the best places to live right now. Would you rather starve in India, Bangladesh or Africa?
There is no such thing as a paradise, and it will never be. All places have their problems.
One of the reasons humanity suffers is the notion that political systems should only reward the people who rise above mediocrity. This view is the dominant view currently in the world, thanks to the media that always focus on rich and successful people. But what about all the others? should all the rest suffer because the system only favors the more clever and capable people? It's better for the more capable people, in the long run, to have society catter for everyone, and thus spare a revolution or two.
No political system works if people are to exploit it for their own benefit. Take USA, for example: it has the richest people in the world, but also 40 million Americans live below the poverty line.
Being able to hurt others is not a right. Smokers have the right to smoke anywhere, until someone complains.
Here is an example: suppose I was a crazy person who liked to shoot at every other person around for fun, not directly at them, but around them.
Would you say that I have the right to shoot at you in a restaurant, where you went with your family to have a nice dinner? Would you say you have no right to demand I conform to your expectations of no shooting?
I don't think you would.
Anarchists? :(
It's because politics is a popularity contest.
Most people perceive unpopular people as "black holes" in the popularity space: get too close to one, and you yourself will become unpopular. Most people will stay way from independents for that reason alone (even if they wholeheartedly align with the independent's stances on the actual issues).
Independents are perceived as unpopular for a number of reasons. They rarely get much of the vote, and they always seem to be pissed off about something that most people don't understand or care much about. They also tend to focus on the actual issues (dry boring shit to most people) instead of trying to pass themselves off as charismatic inspiring leaders (way more interesting to most people).
It's unfortunate, but consistently true, that the most popular people are the ones who abuse unpopular people. After all, according to the black hole theory of popularity, the way to maximize your popularity is to stay as far the fuck away from unpopular people as possible, which means actively and publicly abusing them. School bullies, Adolf Hitler, the Republican party, and Lord Voldemort all used the same tactic to boost themselves and round up supporters.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
I'll think about that the next time I'm walking down the street and you pass me in your pollution-belching SUV... There should be a law against automobiles because I don't like the pollution.
Because smart, nice people know that right-wing economics is simply selfishness. There are a lot of smart, nice people working on projects like Linux - some of the smartest people in the world. They know what's right and what's unfair.
Also, my personal opinion is that the open-source movement - where thousands of people make an equal contribution for the good of everyone - is the closest thing we have at the moment to anarchism in action.
That's the tricky part these days.
If you go by the things the Cato Institute says, well, it starts to come down to the concept of being on your own, and individual freedom is everything, and it almost gets to the point of let the other guy fend for himself. Right, guv'ner, I want to live in the early 18th century with all it's fabulous social features. Uh, no.
A large number of intelligent, technologically-oriented people I know grew up being bullied around by society. They have little care for the sheep as a whole. Some of them (some of the best programmer's I've met) have Aspberger's syndrome, so that emotional connection to others isn't very strong, and hence creates another barrier, and more support of the idea of politics of 'leave me alone and go away'. Of course, that's all good until some tragedy happens and you find yourself totally screwed.
I believe in a libertarian philosophy of minimal government and minimal legislation. On the flip-side, I believe that government needs to provide, directly or indirectly, infrastructure. I want a level playing field for people, not to level the grass growing on the playing field (that's the so-called 'liberal' view, or moreover, the socialist view). Laws should prevent harm to others, not legislate morality.
Now, in this global economy, what is infrastructure? Aside from something we neglect (bridges, power grids, etc.), it needs to encompass what we need in the aggregate to compete globally. We want a system that encourages innovation and development, and makes it less financially viable to engage in crime. We need the roads, rails, power, and such to be encouraged. We also need to keep the air and water clean so we aren't developing 20 different kinds of cancer. But, moreover, in a world where my job can be taken anywhere and a person can travel globally before symptoms develop for disease, education and health care are now vital parts of the infrastructure.
As someone who believes in entrepreneurship, the current situation of property tax-based education in much of this country, and people being beholden to their employer for health care insurance at anything approaching a reasonable rate (and still often unreasonable), I find that equal opportunity to education, removal of social progression in education, perhaps orientation towards outcome based education is vitally important to develop entrepreneurs, and that the ability to move from job to job ot strike out on your own without losing health benefits is vital.
Sadly enough, so many models proposed by so many who claim to be libertarian are based on a vision of the United States that is outdated by 20+ years (often 50+), and hence nearly as ridiculous as the Republican party. Reactionary policies don't work. As the Republicans can't reset morality, as much as they seem to want to, the Libertarians cannot change us back into a simple world of laissez-faire that ignores other countries, or the simple fact that corporations, as legal persons with no soul, have only profit as their motive, and in a system where they report short-term results constantly, will often pursue short-term gains, at the cost of the economy as a whole.
Linux - because it doesn't leave that Steve Ballmer aftertaste.
G-R-E-E-D.
You ask why so many nerds are libertarians and then say that you are a leftist. By typical usage in the US (and from what I can tell of Europe) it is the left that favors greater government regulation. Libertarians favor reduced (or eliminated) government regulation. It is the left that favors telling me what I can and can't do with my private property (I can't smoke in my privately owned restaurant, I can't build on my privately owned property if it has "wetlands"). It is the left that has introduced "speech codes" onto college campuses and elsewhere. I am not a libertarian, but it was my libertarian tendencies that led me from leaning left to leaning right.
As far as novels that do a good job of presenting libertarian philosophy, I happen to think that L. Neil Smith is among the best. His novels are very entertaining and well written. They, also, cling to a very libertarian perception of the world. They presented a very good concept of libertarianism and helped me realize where my world view diverged from libertarianism (before reading them, I considered myself a libertarian. After reading them, I realized that understanding of how the world works diverged significantly from a libertarian understanding).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
When you raise children, care for the sick and infirm you gain a broader perscpetive of life. Nerds are mostly young and health and sheltered from the worst life can offer.
The Libertarian central concept is quite simple and doesn't require a great deal of knowledge or concern with many aspects of society. Since some say nerds are highly functional autists, one can assume that being very very good at one thing (and earning good money from this trait)would make a simplistic political framework very attractive.
Um, where's the top down part of libertarianism? I think you're confused. Republicans are the ones who (supposedly) do both -- bottom up on economics, top down on social issues.
Although, it's a gross oversimplification to talk about any political philosophy (other than libertarianism, which is itself already grossly simple) in such black-and-white terms.
Makes an alternative to "why is Creationism so cool?" or "France to sell nukes to Iran?" I suppose.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
It may be that using your brain to actually question what you are told causes the enhancement of the liberal gene ...
This is anecdotal. You will find Libertarians in all walks of life. The same goes for Rightists. The same goes for Leftists. Stop thinking about this so much and do what you think is right. Keep an open mind and talk to people. Be informed and that's all that anybody expects of you in a democracy.
For one, we are doing pretty damn well.
... replacing the somewhat democratic government we know and hate with a defacto dictatorship in which I would be no better off (with only positive rights those who own the land you live on own you, if there is enough competition you might be able to chose who's slave you will be ... but that is about it). Of course that is just an opinion which can't be proven and which can't even be tested since we just don't have a big enough laboratory (ie. we can't simulate the world, and no ... history does not serve as a replacement, technology changes the situation even if people stay the same).
You can't prove a libertarian run state would be any better, personally I think land ownership would be concentrated in very few hands
There is no truth outside of mathematics.
> I think the book's focus is more on competence than brilliance per se.
I don't even think her issue is competence per se, so much as it is a matter of honesty and justice.
Even Ayn Rand would agree that human ability is a matter of degree, and, indeed, there are many characters in Atlas Shrugged who are portrayed sympathetically, while showing a wide range of capability. Any person who is working within his or her ability (and preferably up to full potential) to earn an honest living, is okay with Rand.
Rand's villains, on the other hand, are those who (dishonestly and unjustly) demand wealth that they have not earned, and authority that they are not capable of wielding (which is where your "competence" factor comes in). And the weapon that those villains use to gain (i.e. steal) their unearned wealth and power is the philosophy of Collectivism. In other words, they use guilt, based on the philosophical premise that the more capable _must_ help the less capable, to demand that the creators of the world give away the wealth and power that they have earned -- putting that wealth and power into the hands of the villains, in the name of society, because they _need_ it more. (Note that this is very different than voluntary charity, and a desire to help one's fellow man.)
The story of Atlas Shrugged is what happens when the most capable in society decide to stop giving away that power, and thus stop supporting the many thieves and mini-dictators in our society. Rand's goal is a society where the honest creators are fully paid for their creations, while the dishonest second-handers (those who would steal, suppress, and pervert those creations) are held powerless, as they deserve.
To use a real world example, most composers, musicians, and the many people in the music distribution business who still choose to compete fairly, would be the heroes in a Rand story. On the other hand, those who are using the RIAA, and government power, to try to suppress the new, more efficient methods of distributing music, would be the villains -- second-handers, who are using unearned power to gain unearned wealth, while causing harm to the rest of us.
I keep myself as a democrat, mainly to vote in the primaries.
I have though been identifying more and more with libertarianism at it's root, though I have some issues with it...
1. The lack of gun control- I live in san francisco- it is small and there is a very dense population here so we see first hand what the lack of gun control has done over the years. The fact is that ALL gun offenses in a metropolitan area should be dealt with stiffly because it infringes on the right of those living in a metropolitan area to live securely.
2. Ending welfare and eliminating minimum wage- we need to look at economics as a whole rather than in the micromanaged way that the poor is looked at right now. welfare is a piece of crap, especially where I live in california where the amount that is given in a welfare check is small enough to only have those with other incomes or those with mental handicaps and addiction issues on it. Also when it comes to minimum wage and corporatization I believe that handing more blank checks to corporate entities with no reigns is what put us in the economic spot that we are in, mainly because the job of a corporation is to make money above all and the job of the government is to provide a safety net for those that fall through the cracks- more and more people are falling through the cracks putting a larger strain on government as a whole. The solution to this is to put reigns on corporate power increase the minimum wage and promote small and individual businesses as it not only helps citizens but also leads to greater innovation as you have a larger base of r&d in all industries with competition being greater. As well creating a mandatory profit sharing would allow a breakup of unionization while not harming workers' rights since as stockholders they would be allowed to control en mass the direction of company movement.
3. Foreign Aid- Foreign aid needs to be changed, but not abolished. Mainly we should give foreign aid through grants to private organizations that are "on the ground" and would be subject to oversight rather than depending on public contribution for the aid provided.
4. Healthcare- deregulation is not a good idea- I am a much bigger fan of socialized healthcare- the fact is that as I see it- the government's main goal should be the protection of it's citizens rights and ability to function, this means that food, healthcare, shelter, protection from violent offenders, national DEFENSE (not offense), public utilities (including phone and internet) and infrastructure should be a given for every citizen of the country at whatever level of income you are. Companies that profit from denying people these basics are doing a disservice to the country (I am looking at you real estate lenders and investors that purposely drive up markets) as they are reducing the base number of contributing citizens to the economy.
one other major thing that I would add- I would allow states to create state funded companies that could go in direct competition with corporations (e.g. in california we could create computer manufacturing companies, gadget manufacturing, telecom etc) and must sell in-state or via direct mail or internet provided that any budget surpluses must be given to the public tax-free in an annual check. This would gear up competition and allow for state driven industries that attract foreign and out of state dollars to fund things like infrastructure and education that may not be gained otherwise. Also it would allow sister state allegiances for like minded states that could be translated to trade, travel and industry that do not exist right now. As well it gives "Brand loyalty" to citizens of a state.
>> Many helpful people have posted links
;)
> I guess Rand would have puked, they had no expectation to get anything in return
Funny, but wrong.
The people who post here _do_ expect to get something in return -- they expect others to also provide comments and links that are of interest to them. It's like Open Source, and many other voluntary organizations, in that, for a small investment of your effort, you get a large return from the efforts of others.
Think about it. If you were the only one doing research, and posting information and links, while everyone else just asked for stuff, would you stick around?
Ayn Rand had no problem with cooperative organizations, provided, that is, that they were _voluntary_.
Libertarians are just conservatives too embarrassed to admit it.
Libertarians, and pretty much anyone who worships at the golden calf of Objectivism, is a philosophy for selfish assholes looking for some validation of their desire to be selfish assholes.
According to surveys, college trained professionals (and not just tech nerds), tend to be overwelmingly liberal in nature. This also tends to tie into the same findings that college students in general are 80% liberal and likely to vote democratic (in the US) for life. The best explination I've seen for this suggests that critical thinking skils tought in the sciences and liberal arts tend to be good inoculents for conservative/literal belief structures.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Leftist ideas don't value the individual like Libertarian ideas do.
Leftists often jump on the civil liberties bandwagon, but rarely the privacy bandwagon.
Most nerds are loners and/or outcasts in some form...with this we've learned that groups and group-think are dangerous to us. Authority has always been the enemy of the nerd. Most of us just want to be left alone.
Leftists want to get everyone involved and on the same page, this is contrary to the nerd-world-view. Most "nerd libertarians" I know don't even vote. They don't want to participate for a variety of reasons. We'll engage in debate in person or online, but like hell if we're going to stop playing around to vote for some dickhead who doesn't represent or stick up for the nerd.
Leftists and Rightytighties tend to know what's best for everyone else. They're always trying to uneven the playing field in some way. Whether it's affirmative action, welfare, corporate welfare, campaign finance reform, etc.
Libertarians openly "don't know" what is best for everyone else. This is generally not viewed as a strength, but it should be. Sure libertarians are weird, it's the party of freaks...freaks with very different ideas on how the world should be, but they all agree they don't want someone else's views forced upon them.
The left isn't that different from the right, both want authority, control and influence over how others behave and spend their money. F-them both!
are actually the same in one very important way: they depend on people to be, in some way, perfect.
Libertarianism fails unless people are perfectly educated and perfectly generous (because libertarianism admits the need for social services, but claims it can be met by charity), and Communism fails unless people have a perfect work ethic.
+++ATH0
(drum roll please)
;-)
We're smarter than the rednecks!!!!!
"I hope you like Guinness, Sir. I find it a refreshing substitute for, er... food." Col. Jack O'Neil, SG-1
I didn't mention Libertarianism which I have never come across. I have never met anyone like that although I have read comments by people who sound like they might fit the bill. It seems a bit stupid because we can't all be free from each other - it's impossible for our actions not to have consequences for everyone as we live together more and more. You're only completely free if you're alone on the planet but then you will be desperately poor because being alone isn't efficient.
:-)
I'm really trying to understand why there is a left/right difference at all. We all know about one's position in life having an effect but I discount that because young poor communists turn into rich old capitalists all the time and I don't find that interesting.
When wealth and social position is taken out of it, why do some people tend one way or the other and have all sorts of long arguments which they can never resolve? I.e. why are differences like this unresolvable?
One of the factors might be the way in which people enjoy solving problems. Perhaps lefties think about "what should be" first e.g. health care for all and then try to organise society so that these things are possible. This is often unworkable and sometimes people who think that they know what's best for everyone are tyrants. Without it, though we'd not have healthcare (at least in the UK) or paid holidays or anything humanitarian etc etc.
I am suggesting that Righties think about developing "what is" in some positive direction but not necessarily anything radical. Plans like this are probably going to work but they may not be visionary enough and might not get us very far.
So there is some need for the two different thinking types to exist and that is why they do.
Anyhow that's the conjecture.
This is all just my personal opinion.
The reason a lot of Nerds are Libertarians is because they see the computer industry as an example of economic Libertarianism working in the real world. PC technology suppliers are truly engaged in a free market battle for you heart and wallet. Companies that release a string of poor products, or even one, can be quickly destroyed in the marketplace. Features and technology advance at a huge pace to satisfy consumers. It's the same with Cell Phones, every year new features, the rate plans get lower and lower bringing more benefits to everyone. PC technology and Cell Phones are two examples of an unregulated free market system that works but in our modern society this is few and far between. What most people think of a capitalism today is not that at all but actually socialist State Corporatism. Consider the Medical industry. Costs have spiralled out of control so badly that people are deluded in thinking the way to make health care afforable is to spend more money on it. Health care is unaffordable simply because the Medical industry is totally insulated from free market forces and competition. They achived this by regulation 'for the public good' licensing, insurance e.t.c If you need a presciption for a cold why can't you see a Nurse for $10? Instead you have to see a Doctor for $100's For 5 thousand years of Human Civilization could get medical treatment for a nominal cost but this has all changed in the last 100 years. Whenever something comes along that may reduce the profits of the medical industry they scream blue murder and regulate it away. The regulatory boards always claim to be for the 'public good' but only serve to stifle competition and keep high profits for the entrenched corporations. This is not Libertarian Capitalism, but State Corporatism and you will find most of our modern society is this way. John Stossel has written about the damage government does for the 'public good' in his 2 books called 'Give me a Break' and 'Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidty'
As a programmer, I think engineers tend to like to look at government the same way as they look at engineering projects. In engineering, we like to use simple, clean solutions that are easily understood and verified. Software that contains lots of special-cases quickly becomes fragile, bloated, and generally bad.
Or, at least, engineers think it is bad. In practice, almost all the software we use regularly is big and bloated with lots of special-cases. But, engineers -- myself included -- still think of the simple, clean solutions as better.
When you extend that thinking to government, Libertarianism looks very attractive. It says that just a few simple rules -- basically, capitalism, enforcing contracts, and protecting property rights -- gives you a system which magically fixes everything. Libertarians provide all sorts of logical arguments that cover individual cases, e.g. "In the absence of the FDA, private drug certification companies will emerge.". It all sounds so simple.
Unfortunately, in the real world, it just doesn't work. Before the FDA, private drug certification companies did not provide adequate protection for consumers. That's the whole reason why the FDA was created. So why should we think that if we abolish the FDA things will work out this time? In general, most of our government institutions were created to address real problems that existed in the past. Those problems were not solved by Libertarianism at the time, and they won't magically be solved if we try it again.
The fact is, the real world is far too complicated to be governed by any simple set of rules. As nice as Libertarianism sounds, it just will not work in practice.
With that said, Libertarianism does have some good ideas. We should definitely be using competition to force government services to improve. But instead of just abolishing the services and letting the private sector have at it, we should set up rules on a case-by-case basis which create the right incentives, so that the private sector can compete with the government in a way that doesn't screw over the consumer. E.g., allow private drug certification companies to exist, but have the FDA audit their decisions, and apply harsh penalties if they get something wrong. This might allow efficient private companies to do most of the work while keeping government oversight intact.
Smaller-scale solutions like these are actively pursued by smart lawmakers from both main parties all the time, because they work well. Of course, you don't hear about them much because average people don't care about these things.
Parent's post is a worthless flamebait comment.
Washington, I'll grant you. He was (ahem) a simple man who only accepted the job because it needed to be filled by someone people could stand behind nearly unanimously. He was a true Cincinnatus of his day. He was definitely not much of a politician.
I strongly recommend you read His Excellency to get a more in-depth view of Washington. He was an extremely political figure who played the role of the "reluctant leader" to perfection. That he is remembered today as such a quiet and unassuming man is definitely a testament to his acting skills.
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
This term seemed to start getting REAL popular as soon as the hideous failures of our conservative Supreme Court, Executive branch, House, and Senate started to become apparent even through the ingenious layers of political spin and machinations.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
. . . in a restaurant is that it flavors the food, the drink, and the breath of the lady you ate with when you kiss her goodnight, even if she doesn't smoke. Before WWI, it was consider polite to inquire before lighting up. Manners changed with the advent of BIG tobacco and the nearly universal use of cigarettes. My dad, who was a two-pack-a-day man, used to try to quit pretty regularly and would after about a month start talking about how much more he could taste and smell. Of course he always fell off the wagon in no more than three to six months, but he used that memory of how things REALLY smelled and REALLY tasted to motivate him for the next attempt. As a libertarian I support a smoker's right to smoke, as long as he or she has the manners to ask whether anyone minds. This isn't the '40s or '50s and you can't simply assume that the majority around you all smoke, too; the odds are they don't. Times change.
All human societies are ordered in hierarchies, most human organizations and institutions are set up in the same way.
So if belonging to a hierarchy, were it is evident beyond the obvious that some people will give orders while others take them, is a fact of life, a very important one I would argue, what is wrong with teaching people to learn how to behave in such environment?
When you enter a hierarchy (work , club, political party, sports team) you are expected to pay respect to certain individuals, and that respect is completely and utterly asymmetric and may not be reciprocated.
All this talk about teaching people to think is great and all, but it is not actually what you are advocating. You are defending an anarchic system in which somebody that has earned a position of power or respect should no longer be respected or obeyed by people that have not earned their stripes on the organization.
Unless you can present us with a different, working way to organize human communities, all this talk about "thinking for yourself" and lack of respect for figures of authority is all bland nonsense. Even the anarchists have a bloody pegging order, they are primates as well after all, and we primates like to have a Dear Leader.
You can think for yourself perfectly while recognizing that you have a place in each organization to which you belong, this place will come with expectations about how you treat your superiors.
Basically you are criticizing an institution (the school, the public school in particular) that has nurtured people to fit in society and better themselves, deriding the skill of obeying order graciously as something of a hindrance rather that what it is: a necessary skill of civilized life.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
And if that means leaving a minority to fend for themselves, so bad.
It logistically impossible for a public system to cater for all individuals. Now, if countries would realign their budgets towards education instead of other expenditures (like killing Iraqis for example) perhaps this lofty ideal of one-to-one classes for all could be achieved.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
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So the only reason you're not a lefty is because of some ridiculous notion that we're all a bunch of treehuggers who smell like peyote and have drum circles?
Are you saying you have a problem with treehuggers? Are they unacceptable to you? Are they people who discolor what you stand for and whom you would rather see kicked out?
Let me try and clarify this point with some personal experience. I am a gay man. Meaning, I am a man who is with another man. And yet, I despise the "gay pride" parade. I see it as a parade where everyone's sexual fetish gets its own float. If I were to march in the gay pride parade, then it implies that I accept everyone within it as part of the "gay community". It means that I would have no problem whatsoever marching behind the United Gay Fisters float. It means I accept them. And if I march behind them, then I say to the world that I *AM* them. I say to the worlds, "Yes, I and the United Gay Fisters are gay!" I lump them and me under the same ideological umbrella and say that we are all one.
So if you accept treehuggers then, for all intents and purposes, you *are* treehuggers. When an individual says, "As to the Left, the hippy stuff just bugs me that all. I don't like drum circles nuff said." He's not saying that you are a treehugger. He's saying that he wouldn't mind being a part of the left except for the fact that you have to accept treehuggers as "one of us" if you want to be part of the Left, and he doesn't want to do that.
Then again, if you despise treehuggers and would rather see them kicked to the curb than part of the Left, then everything I said above is moot. I would have great sympathy for that position because I don't count myself part of "gay culture" because I think circuit parties suck and drag queens are disgusting. And if you know anything about gay culture, then you must accept those things if you want to be counted as "one of us".
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Furthermore, such warfare tactics induce serious ill-will and would ensure that alternatives come hard and fast. Finally, radio is not the only transmission medium; there is satellite, line of sight optical networks, and wide-spectrum radio systems. Developing and running a wide-spectrum jammer is even more expensive than narrow-band jammers; this monopoly would be fighting a never-ending guerilla war that they have no hope of ever winning.
You're butting up against an article of Leftist faith. In their religion, individuals are helpless, exploited morons who are powerless to stop the onslaught of merciless, vicious corporations. Only the single greatest monopoly ever, the government, can save those pathetic losers. This is core Truth to a Leftist and your examples to the contrary mean nothing to them. Save your energy.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Libertarianism at root has two planks: minimal government involvement in the economy (allowing the market to regulate itself) and minimal government involvement in private lives (allowing people to regulate themselves). Each of these has some appeal to intelligent people (nerds) because of their own self-interest.
The Car Talk guys once said that many driving rules are only for people who don't know what they're doing. While they were half joking, there's a kernel of truth to be found there. Perhaps we could rephrase to say that rules exist to keep dumb people from hurting themselves and others. Nerds are by definition smart, and therefore in many circumstances, behavioral restrictions intended to protect against dumb people serve to hinder nerds' freedoms.
Many nerds want to manage their own lives because they believe they are smart enough to do it themselves and think they can do it better. They want to allow the "invisible hand" to raise up those who are independent and resourceful enough to do the same and allow those who are dumb to be pushed down, rather than having the government push down the resourceful folks (themselves included) and lift up the incompetent.
Likewise, they want to let the forces of economics regulate the marketplace (excepting corruption, monopolizing, etc.). In theory, this will allow the best to rise to the top and the consumer to get the best prices, all thanks to competition.
The problems with this view, in my opinion, are that it is too dispassionate toward our fellow human beings, particularly those who are not as gifted as nerds (with power and smarts comes responsibility, as Uncle Ben said), and pure capitalism seems just as dangerous. There has to be some synthesis with socialism, or the society will fail.
For instance, take school vouchers. Everyone wants universal education (at least up to a point), and indeed a democratic republic demands that its voting citizens be educated. The libertarian idea is to let the market promote the good schools and drive bad ones out of "business." The problem is that special needs kids get overlooked in such a scheme, and the kids at the bottom end up with little chance to make their way out and only have a choice between bad and worse -- exacerbating the social problem. I'm not offering a better solution here (that wasn't the question), but just offering an example of how I think libertarian policy can neglect the weaker elements of society in harmful ways to society as a whole.
I think that what is being observed here is the fact that most thoughtful individuals go through a Libertarian stage at some point in their lives. I went through a Libertarian stage in my mid-20's; it made perfect sense to me at the time. A lot of the younger people I work with in their 20's sound just like I did at their age; Libertarian or libertarian-leaning Republicans. I think it is good to "try on" varous viewpoints. While I'm now much more liberal than I was as a young man I'm eclectic and retain many libertarian viewpoints. As a pragmatist I'm more concerned if something works than how well it adheres to any ideology.
How is it that there is a post on Libertarianism and not a single comment (out of over 1000) mentioning the Constitution and the Founding Fathers?
"Nerds" are more likely to be libertarians because they are intelligent and curious. They have likely read the Constitution and supporting documents written by the Founding Fathers and understand their intent. Their opinions have probably not been molded by political parties or the MSM.
I like your response.
You have all candor, of someone who does not understand the subject matter.
(This was a veiled insult, brought to you by simple logic and common sense.)
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
You can't take the sky from me...
If by nerds you mean the audience of this site, then "Libertarian" isn't the phrase I'd use to describe their political/economic views. It might have been once, but there's been a major swing to the left in the average Slashbot over the past two years. Anarcho-communism would be a lot closer to being the right term for this site's political/economic bias, in my own mind. The resurgence of the FSF has probably had more to do with that than anything else.
Nerds are raised world wide. In the USA, Nerds are the "outcasts" from the mainstream body during H.S., as they aren't sports heros. Then, in college, they wind up in classes with a bunch of people from around the world, looking to get a good engineering education. If you go onto get a Phd, it becomes even more so.
During the whole time, Nerds are playing with computers, engaging in science at least as a hobby, and are reading about contributions from people all over the planet, and in many different cultures. So, you really, wind up with, a body of people that are really raised to be in and then engage in a course of study and profession that requires you to set aside prejudices to not only succeed, but to make friends as well.
The question really is, not, how are nerds libertarians, but really, how could any nerd not be a libertarian, except as a reactionary thing.
This is my sig.
I am guessing Brenadan was surprised to discover that so many nerds are libertarian because he thought that the poll would show most to be liberal and he wanted to use that as evidence that most smart people are liberal. Therefor the answer is buried in the implied question: Many nerds are Libertarian because we are smart. Leftism doesn't work. Some people wish it did. Some of us are glad it doesn't, but the economic history of the 20th century proves it had never worked in any implementation anywhere. Personally, I am libertarian be cause I love freedom but i also know that anarchy is inherently unstable.
Your objections reveal a lack of understanding about economics, specifically incentives. Socialized medicine removes some of the incentive to stay healthy. Gun control creates not only a populace unable to defend itself but also a black market for guns. Raising the minimum wage removes the incentive to hire workers below a certain level of productivity so it raises unemployment most among the handicapped and the unskilled/inexperienced.
actually it is the opposite- you don't understand what incentives are none of the things that you stated are incentives- they are all enforcements- the carrot and stick approach requires a carrot as well as a stick
I hope this discussion doesn't break down into an argument over definitions and semantics. Whether we are talking about enforcements or incentives, it doesn't change the fact that there are unintended consequences for well intentioned policies. Often the consequences create a bigger problem than the original one the policies were created to resolve.
Socialized medicine removes some of the incentive to stay healthy is a ridiculous concept, early and preventative medicine and education is a far better way to keep people healthy than the threat of economic problems- all that does is make people put off health care till it is too late Gun control creates not only a populace unable to defend itself but also a black market for guns. most black market guns are stolen or illegally obtained from legal owners- also in a gunfight 2 people with guns, one who never uses it and 1 that does- the perp has a far better chance of making it out since a gun is NOT a shield it only works when you shoot first Raising the minimum wage removes the incentive to hire workers below a certain level of productivity so it raises unemployment most among the handicapped and the unskilled/inexperienced. unskilled and inexperienced workers should be trained and educated in order to perform better at a workplace, we shouldn't bring ALL workers pay below poverty level to make up for a hole in our education system and untrained workers- also in most areas you cannot live on minimum wage pay, just like welfare when you lower a person's living standards you increase the probability of crime (violent and not)
>>enforcement never works as well as incentives concerning domestic policy I agrre with you there, but it kinf of undercuts your argument though. >>early and preventative medicine and education is a far better way to keep people healthy than the threat of economic problems- all that does is make people put off health care till it is too late Maybe true, but you were the one advocating the carrot AND the stick. >>most black market guns are stolen or illegally obtained from legal owners Some of them. Most are bought legally and then sold illegally. >>unskilled and inexperienced workers should be trained and educated in order to perform better at a workplace, we shouldn't bring ALL workers pay below poverty level to make up for a hole in our education system and untrained workers- also in most areas you cannot live on minimum wage pay, just like welfare when you lower a person's living standards you increase the probability of crime (violent and not) By raising the minimum wage, you are reducing the majority of that training, which is on-the-job. It is possible and very common (though not easy) to live on minimum wage. I've done it. I live in Juarez, Mexico where the average wage is &80/week. No mass starvation here. And I never said bring "ALL workers pay below poverty level." Just the entry level workers. You gotta start somewhere.
I've yet to meet one which wasn't american (and one which didn't have the political perspective of a goldfish, then again that's the case of most americans today).